To my mind royalty are just an odd kind of lottery winners. I can't see why people get any more irritated at them than at any other lottery winners. It's not like they had any power. Their role is to make sure that the Thatchers and Blairs never get to be classed as head of state.

Personally I would favour a monarchy in which the head of state was a dog or a horse. The present royals could even stick around as hereditary dog or horse attendants. Who'd notice the difference - the Trooping of the Colour could continue precisely as it is today, which would be fun.

An old bloke pottering around and saying the same sort of things old blokes anywhere are likely to say, not particularly funny, not particularly offensive - and so what if they were anyway? It's the equivalent of those TV programmes of home videos where people keep on falling over - mildly amusing, but hardly worth getting in a tizz over.

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The difference with Dan Quayle is that he was only a heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the world. (Now of course someone of equivalent intellectual stature to Quayle has the job anyway.)