Morning:
10°c
Reading, yesterday, that there are secret plans for Prince William to take over more and more of his grandmother's official duties, I came over all funny. A manful tear, reader, welled in my eye.
The story was used as the occasion for the traditional speculation - designed to sow discord in the family and torment poor Prince Charles to the point of madness - that the monarchy is going to skip a generation.
But more likely it's just what it looks like: a sharing of the burden. And what I thought was: about bloody time, too. Hasn't the poor old duck had enough?
Of course it's silly to have a monarchy with the running costs paid for out of general taxation, sitting on a whole pile of private wealth whose historical origins bear about as much scrutiny as that of Tate & Lyle.
But that's not the Queen's look-out. You might as well blame a bus conductor for the route of the number 73.
There she is, dutifully determined to spend the rest of her days grinning till her cheeks hurt and waving until a case of tennis elbow would feel like a birthday present.
Sometimes one hears someone say the Queen "isn't relevant", or that her hats seem to belong to another era.
"She's EIGHTY-THREE!" I find myself wanting to shriek, holding onto my interlocutor's ears as if they were either side of a steering wheel. "EIGHTY-THREE! Her hats DO belong to another era. SHE'S OLDER THAN ALAN BENNETT! It's astonishing she's still VERTICAL, let alone ambling around ON FOOT day after day dispensing encouragement to the natives with her 88-YEAR-OLD husband!"
And yet it's that just means she's never been better at her job. A colleague of mine makes what seems to me a canny point about last week's photograph of HRH meeting Lady Gaga at the Royal Variety Performance.
"When you're that old you don't care," she said. "Everything must just seem funny."
There's Gaga, dressed in a giant red verruca sock, curtseying prettily while Her Maj beams at her like an indulgent gran. Lady Gaga seems outrageous to teenagers and arts journalists - the two most conservative sectors of the population - but why should we be surprised that she doesn't faze the Queen?
Every since the days (long before you and I remember) when "variety performances" actually took place as a form of entertainment, Her Majesty has shuffled annually along these lines of absurd people bending and bobbing like deferential visitors from another planet.
When you've locked eyes with Wee Jimmy Krankie, maintained a stately reserve in the face of Bob Carolgees's moustache and Rod Hull's whole face, and smiled without flinching at Paul Daniels, Lady Gaga won't cause you to turn a hair.
I'm not sure either her son or grandson has that gift. Prince Charles is desperately anxious to be relevant.
Prince William - what with pretending to be Ben Fogle for a laugh - might actually be relevant. But both are disadvantages in the job. The sad thing is that Her Maj is at her most indispensible at the very instant when she most deserves to be allowed to pack it in.
Bidding to be the best ever auction
Never in the history of newspaper charity auctions, surely, has there been one quite so gripping as the Evening Standard's Christmas appeal.
The 150 lots on offer include seeing Sting give birth to a baby lamb, having Geoffrey Robertson QC post bail for you, watching the Duchess of York eat tea, and owning a nude watercolour of Big Issue founder John Bird.*
I cannot commend too highly this auction. In the first place, every penny spent benefits the wonderful Kids Company - which provides material and emotional support for the most deprived children in our city. In the second, looking at how people have bid is simply fascinating.
The price of having Rowan Atkinson drive you to work in a Rolls, for instance, has nearly doubled since he was pictured waiting for the RAC after his vintage Jag caught fire.
See these ironists off! For a last chance to fill your stocking, log onto www.standard.co.uk. You so won't regret it.
* Some product descriptions are approximate
Time to rage against Cowell
An online campaign encourages people to fight the X-Factor by making Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name the Christmas number one. It has enough supporters so it looks possible.
I sat through all 44 hours, or whatever it was - about 25 minutes, if you don't include the repeated footage - of last night's X-Factor final, and I say: do it! Buy RATM!
I'm sure that when those right-on rap-rock veterans set out to fight the power of white, male, corporate oppression, they imagined it was the White House they would cause to quake with fear.
But Simon Cowell is, after Gordon Brown, the most powerful unelected official in the UK. Rage will have done their work well enough if they give him a black eye by knocking his protégé into second place.
• I am dismayed, I have to say, by a recent interview with "Combat Barbie" - as Katrina Hodge, the decorated Iraq veteran who has just represented England at the Miss World competition - is known.
Asked what it was like to be involved in a gunfight, Ms Hodge said: "Try paintballing. It's the same." I'll take her word for it - she's the one with the commendation for bravery. But I fear this will only serve to encourage the Walts (army slang for Walter Mitty fantastists) who make paintballing such a bore for everyone else.
You know the type: goateed 38-year-old virgins who turn up with camouflage pants, their own guns, a bandolier full of rubbish smoke bombs, and the sort of killer instinct that involves shooting a bunch of nine-year-olds in the face.
Couldn't we just pretend, for the sake of keeping these pillocks in their place, that paintballing wasn't much like real war?
