Simon Hoggart

Let them eat cake

Prince Charles turned up on TV again this week, in Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC1, Sunday), wandering round a country house in Scotland that he had helped to restore.

issue 20 August 2011

Prince Charles turned up on TV again this week, in Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC1, Sunday), wandering round a country house in Scotland that he had helped to restore.

Prince Charles turned up on TV again this week, in Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC1, Sunday), wandering round a country house in Scotland that he had helped to restore. He was interviewed by Paul Martin, best known as the presenter of Flog It!, in which he gets aerated by an auction for a Georgian silver salt cellar, or a set of cigarette cards.

For some reason, presenters who would sink their fangs into a politician, no matter how important, are reduced to quivering lapdogs by royalty. Alan Titchmarsh offered five-star fawning, drool seeping all over the Prince of Wales as he went round his garden at Highgrove. Fiona Bruce, interviewing the Duke of Edinburgh, gets only three stars, but she must have been sorely tested by the Duke’s lack of co-operation, or ‘rudeness’ as it is sometimes called.

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