Knocking out the royals

To test out my theory that any lawyer with an IQ of 40 should be addressed as "Your Honour", I recently embarked on an unusual judicial campaign. Using my detailed knowledge of British civil law and non-Euclidian geometry, I've begun to commit a series of minor (but unpleasant) offences at strategic points around Buckingham Palace, allowing myself to be arrested each time, and pleading guilty in court. Unaware of my secret motive, the judges keep placing one-mile exclusion orders on me, and if everything goes according to plan, by September the banned zones will have almost interlocked, ensuring that the only remaining place in London where I'll be legally entitled to live is an attic in the palace, just above Prince Edward's chambers.

Once ensconced there, I shall become this newspaper's unofficial royal correspondent, filing stories about how I've seen the Prince early in the morning, enjoying a boiled egg with two lovely thick soldiers, or caught him unawares late at night, stuck in his boudoir between a tallboy and a pouffe.

On Saturday night, I glimpsed the Prince strutting around in make-up and yellow tights, but I can't really claim that as a scoop, because I was watching It Shouldn't Happen To A Royal Reporter (ITV1). This romp through the Windsor archives contained plenty of exquisitely embarrassing moments, but none more mortifying than the sight of Edward Wessex kitted out in mock-mediaeval regalia, single-handedly wrecking the credibility of his entire family in 1987 by staging the PR disaster that was It's A Royal Knockout.

"He showed himself to be juvenile, puerile," declared one normally respectful commentator mournfully, while others weren't so generous ("He proved in two minutes what a complete prat he was," was another verdict), and I briefly wondered if the ill-advised joust might possibly have been redeemed, had Edward cast Fergie as Lady Godiva. Probably not because, if he had, the horse would have stolen the show.

In between clips of the Windsors' occasional highs and all-too-frequent lows, a decorum (I think that's the correct collective noun) of royal reporters spoke frankly about what it's like to work in the most protocolridden section of the British media.

"It's essentially the same story every day," lamented Michael Cole, while Jennie Bond confided that she'd often had "to make an interesting story out of the movement of the Queen's foot" and all agreed that "an ability to waffle" (preferably in the ludicrously phatic pop-up Book of Kells lexicon that Richard Dimbleby bequeathed to the profession) is essential.

"They are permanently unpleasant to us," added James Whitaker with admirable candour, and as if to prove the point, we saw Nicholas Owen on the receiving end of Prince Philip's fury, after he'd had the temerity to point out that the Prince's presidency of the World Wildlife Fund was at odds with his former penchant for tiger hunting. "I only shot one tiger, and it happened to be lame," was the Prince's angry and hypocritical response, and watching him treat this widely respected reporter as though he was a lowly serf, it struck me that when God put teeth into his mouth, he ruined a perfectly good arse.

Before long, my latent Dave Spart tendencies were coming to the fore, and some of the anecdotes about the Windsors' gratuitous rudeness left me wanting to strangle the last monarch with the guts of the last priest. Hearing one reporter describe how he'd been bodily lifted up and flung out of a room by a royal henchman for daring to speak before he'd been spoken to was actually shocking, and reporters were clearly expected to endure scores of petty humiliations each day, in return for a few moments of royal access.

The hacks listed "a strong bladder" and "yards of rat-like cunning" (be careful not to utter that phrase in a gale) as essential requirements for the job, and although they displayed a certain affection for one or two of the Windsors, it was clear that they ultimately felt little allegiance to the family, and would do anything to secure a royal scoop. Indeed, Whitaker put it most succinctly as he recalled how Fergie had been humiliated by the famous toesucking pictures he'd obtained, and remarked "their despair is our delight."

ITV1'S Saturday night schedule has been in some disarray of late, but if they keep showing well-edited, intelligent, and entertaining programmes like this (while Lorraine Heggessey at BBC1 continues her relentless down-market pond-slime trend), the audience will surely return. By the end, my opinion of royal reporters was a good deal higher than it had been at the start, and I even confess to having been impressed by Prince Charles's sangfroid during what had appeared to be an assassination attempt in Australia (if I'd been in his position, I'd have emptied my bowels and shimmied up a drainpipe within seconds - conduct scarcely befitting a future monarch).