Well, Don, I turned the telly on for a little while and saw the inane bobbing up and down to the Sailor's Hornpipe, so I suppose I get counted too. And I watched the concert. Neither of those viewing experiences marks me out as a royalist, I assure you, and I doubt that I'm alone.

Yes, 242 is bigger than 7.9 (though your figure should be 32, not 7.9, but we'll let that pass for now). But the thing is that it's all our money anyway. The royals, with their 242 million, are giving us back what is already ours. Break up those vast estates and give the land to thousands of hard-working, honest individuals who don't employ massed ranks of top accountants and you'd multiply that tax take of 242 million by a good few times, I reckon. Unless you trust the royal playboys and girls over the ordinary working people of the country, of course. I know who I trust more.

HM "doesn't come across as repugnant" simply because she doesn't come across as anything at all. Or, at best, a scarcely smiling, hand-waving, white-gloved old doll.