Ours would be a grim age if we were to deny millions of people cheap and satisfying entertainment, and so, therefore, perhaps we should be especially grateful to the Prince of Wales and Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles as they approach their wedding day. Few people in Britain seem to welcome the happiness the couple clearly feel as they approach the regularisation of their relationship. However, the joy the public finds instead in engaging in acts of spite, hypocrisy, gratuitous vilification and outright republicanism seems to more than make up for that.
Among politicians even one so supposedly senior as the oafish Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, allowed himself a sneer when the engagement was announced. Among the clergy of the Established Church even the Bishop of Salisbury, David Stancliffe, could reconcile with his definition of Christian behaviour an attempt publicly to humiliate the heir to the throne by demanding that he apologise to his fiancée’s former husband, Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, for cuckolding him.
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