Duchess shows her mole

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson and bedtime companion PJ the Mole

11 April 2012

As part of this column's public service remit, I like to pass on good counsel to parents whose children are currently approaching their GCSEs. So here is some advice sent to me by Mr and Mrs Madeupname.

They tell me that last year their son was trailing badly in his GCSE maths course, so in despair (after trying everything from pep talks to hypnosis without success) they enrolled him for private lessons at a nearby monastery.

Amazingly, his entire attitude changed from the very first day, he began concentrating like never before, and after a single term he achieved the best results in the history of the examination board.

"Was it the one-to-one tuition from the monks that did it," they asked him, "or perhaps their revised curriculum?"

Made-up-name Junior replied: "No. It was when I walked into the entrance hall on the first day, and saw the bloke they'd nailed to the 'plus' sign. I just knew that those monks meant business."

Even in this era of calculators and spell checkers, teaching the young to count and to read remains a difficult yet vitally important task.

And for the past half century, children's television has been doing its best to encourage tiny minds to grapple with the mysteries of numbers and letters, from Play School and Sesame Street through to PJ's Storytime, which began yesterday in the infants' prebedtime slot on the Playhouse Disney channel.

In the best traditions of the Shavian sugar-coated pill (as pioneered by George Bernard Shave himself), a celebrity reads aloud a favourite illustrated story each day, in an attempt to lull the alarmingly purple PJ Mole (imagine a furry Ian McCaskill with dangerously high blood pressure) to sleep.

Already signed up for the series are Michelle Collins, Gaby Roslin, Natalie Appleton, and Eamonn Holmes, although in the case of the cerebrally- challenged GMTV presenter (who is rumoured to wear slip-on shoes because his mummy never taught him how to tie his own laces), I suspect PJ will end up having to read the story to him.

Yesterday's programme featured Lady Sarah Ferguson, whose "favourite book" just happened to be one that she had written herself. Given that I once revealed that her Budgie the Helicopter story was a pale imitation of the 1954 picture book Polly Copter's Adventures, I initially wondered whether Little Red might turn out to have possessed a riding hood in an earlier incarnation.

But no, the illustrated character and her associates proved to be original (albeit thoroughly unremarkable) creations. What's more, Sarah soon struck up an effective working relationship with the babbling PJ, taking the animated and sensible role in the double act, opposite a third-rate stooge of a Muppet with a childlike mind and a tiny vocabulary.

Well, I suppose all those years she spent married to Prince Andrew were an ideal rehearsal for the task.

As Little Red, Little Blue, and Roany the pony worked away in Buttercup Cottage, preparing the ingredients for a picnic (no Tupperware in sight, that sort of thing being anathema to the royals), it soon became clear that plot is not exactly Ms Ferguson's strong suit.

Indeed, her entire story consisted of the characters packing some chocolate cake, helping a rabbit off a lily pad, then eating the chocolate cake (honestly, I haven't omitted anything of significance), and my mind wandered off to muse on the nature of picnicking, and on the proof it offers us that the Supreme Deity verily possesses a warped and twisted sense of humour.

After all, He created cream, scones, smoked salmon sandwiches, and bottles of Chablis for us to consume, wicker baskets and tartan rugs to place the delicacies on, quiet summer days for us to enjoy them, blazers and boaters for us to wear, the sun to warm us, and trees to shade us.

Then He sat back with folded arms, contemplated His work, and with one final touch designed the wasp to bugger the whole thing up. Just our luck to have been created by an omnipotent being with a schoolboy-like appreciation of the practical joke.

The story over, PJ agreed to go to bed after "a bit of a hugglehugglesnuggle Sarah" (so at least she did not have to perform any demeaning toe sucking), but I suspect the Windsors are none too pleased that the mother of royal children should be engaged in trade.

This is unfair, because Ms Ferguson has emerged bloodied but unbowed from a decade-long press onslaught and a flirtation with insolvency, and is now earning a living without relying unduly on her royal associations, and that's more than can be said for her brother-in-law Edward.

His Ardent TV production company isn't even listed in this year's Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television guide. When it was it traded shamelessly on his Windsor connections, and, anyway, he always had the family fortune to fall back on.

This was just as well, because if he'd had to rely on the income he earned from TV production, he'd now be in a position to shoot a remake of The Prince and the Pauper, playing both roles himself.

Frankly, when he surveys the shambles of his media career, I'm surprised he doesn't feel like going to the top of a tall building and tossing himself off.

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