Royal weddings and toe curling affairs

This week I'm glad I don’t still live in Britain - and not just because of appalling November weather and the notion of freezing to death in some greasy diner in a seaside town they forgot to close down.

For the benefit of anyone who has been in a coma this week or a capsule on a one way journey to Mars (sadly Sarah Palin isn’t going this far), the announcement of a Royal engagement between Prince William and Kate Middleton has not just been hugging the headlines; it has been stealing them and making a getaway.

The relief is almost palpable for people who like this kind of thing. The last Royal Wedding in 2005 was between Prince Charles and Camilla. It reminded me of a mating ritual in the reptile house of a zoo.

Even the date had to be moved because the Pope died. I have a wedding mug with the wrong date that I thought might make me some money one day. Unfortunately we ended up using it for coffee to the extent that Charles and Camilla’s heads have worn off. Probably no bad thing. Don’t want to scare the kids and all that.

There are always plenty of headlines on those magazines you see at Food Lion about the hell of Charles and Camilla's wedding but it's really hard to know. These are the same magazines that bang on about George W. Bush and Condi. Rice.

Britain hasn’t had a feelgood wedding between two young people since that of William’s mother Diana and his father Charles in 1981. It’s still hard to believe William is related to Charles but the older William gets the more his father’s genes appear to kick in. Expect him to be talking to plants soon.

And Will and Kate seem somewhat less dysfunctional that the young Charles and Diana. Julie Burchill in a hilarious column in the Independent picks up on Charles’ telling comment “Whatever "in love" means, that was made in a post engagement interview.

In typical acerbic style Burchill writes she “could only imagine my interest being piqued this time around if Diana's son repeated the creepy line which his worthless, hypocritical father came out with all those years ago when asked if he was in love with his radiant young fiancée, Diana Spencer.”

In retrospect we know ‘whatever “in love” means' translates to “Camilla on the side.”

So Wills and Kate seem to be sensible enough young people and Wills has succeeded in avoiding some of his brother Harry’s jolly japes such as showing up to fancy dress parties in Nazi uniforms.

It remains to be seen if this is enough to make a Royal wedding a success story in contemporary England.

And if you think this is me being over cynical I would point out I was idealistic about this sort of thing once; in 1973 to be exact when I was six-years-old and Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips.

I asked my mother if I could see the ceremony and if this Princess was beautiful I had never seen a real princess.

My mother said she wasn’t and Princess Anne resembled a horse.

And really it all seemed to gallop downhill from there. There was Fergie and Andrew and those embarrassing toe sucking pictures and Charles’ rather infamous comment to Camilla where he said he wanted to be a Tampax.

It seems the days when Royal aspirations ran high are long gone. No danger of Charles being beheaded like his famous namesake for seeking to run the country.

It would be nice if the Royals could set their sights a bit higher. Or failing that, at least have affairs that are not totally embarrassing, before the inevitable Royal divorce.

It’s funny but notwithstanding the last few decades that have reduced the House of Windsor to a real life Carry On film, Americans are still, by and large, willing to buy into the dream of fairytale romance.

Which is strange really when you consider that this is a nation that couldn't stomach the madness of King George.