Did the Diana statue have to be quite so frumpy?

Look, I know it wouldn’t have been on if the Dianastatue had her dangling her legs off the side of a cast-bronze yacht’s gangplank and it’s not, exactly, that I wanted to see her darting a look up through a Sloaney fringe — but did it have to be quite so frumpy?

Ian Rank-Broadley’s piece had been teasingly kept secret until its unveiling by the dukes yesterday, who’d reunited for the occasion (granted, likely a sombre day, but another let down in itself — I can’t have been the only one secretly hoping for a punch up in the fountains).

The gentle furtiveness didn’t really suggest anything shocking might come — though, as Rank-Broadley’s website racily attests, he has a thing for nudes — but given Diana’s lionised legacy, didn’t she deserve to have something more thrilling, thought-provoking and impactful than a dull blob of bronze that looks awfully like a Hornby figurine scaled up for the real world? And while generally I tend to think the everlasting adoration of the princess a bit much — shouldn’t we expect our bored, influential millionaires with nothing better to do to go out and help, rather than hero worship them for it? — the joy of Diana was in her vivid, vivacious magnetism that drew people in and let her shake them, and the ways things were done, up.

Rank-Broadley has sucked the life from her; she stands heavily, in her dullest clothes (statues should not wear belts), arms around two children, while a disconcertingly gormless third is hidden behind the trio, pointing at nothing. There is no vitality in the thing, probably because there’s not a hint of controversy, as though it were boring to avoid backlash. What a statement for the times.

Apparently William and Harry were closely involved in the project and, after all, this is their mum. Maybe they did want to play it safe. But did it have to look like something you’d find at the back of a garden centre?