Charles, the longest heir-in-waiting in history, must be desperately hoping that he now lives long enough to have his face on some coins and currency notes.

I was startled to see that he talked recently about the huge burden he now carries (‘the heavy duty of sovereignty’).

Really?

Charles has no significant, practical responsibilities other than overseeing the spending of huge quantities of taxpayers’ money. It seems to me that his main duties are to wave, open things (he’d fly 1,000 miles in a private jet to open an envelope or a cupboard) and plant occasional trees. And the tree planting just involves tossing a little earth into a ready dug hole. Hardly arduous, is it? Sitting at a supermarket check-out is infinitely more arduous and rather less well-rewarded.

Charlie should leave the whingeing to the Californian based specialists.

And yet, although they are supposed to keep out of important political affairs, the royals have for years now been breaking the contract which governs their very existence. A relative of ours had the toxic covid jab ‘because the queen said it was important to have it’. How many people were killed or injured by the late queen’s inexcusable interference and abuse of privilege?

The royals made it clear they supported jabs and mask wearing and the EU and it doesn’t matter that they were wrong – what matters is that they used their influence with the gullible and the easily led when the constitutional deal was and is that they keep their opinions to themselves.

I wonder, by the way, if the royals will pay death duties on the queen’s vast estate? If not, why not?

And how nice it was that the queen is reported to have had her doctors with her when she was dying. That was as it should be. But the official line of the medical establishment is that for the rest of us, home visits are a waste of the doctor’s valuable time. In the time taken to visit a patient at home, a doctor could play two or three holes of golf or earn big money moonlighting for an internet medical service.