Diana wins – from beyond the grave

Caught on camera at a Remembrance service last week, Queen Elizabeth appeared, rather unexpectedly, to be crying.

It was quite a shocking thing to behold: I had never seen our Queen cry before. Perhaps it was just the cold, dank weather getting to her, biting into her bones. Or maybe it was another of those confused and ill-advised attempts to be modern, something imposed upon her by her Blairite PR people.

Crying is certainly the modern thing to do – as is, of course, hugging and touching and being, you know, really, really real. Poor, dead Diana cried and hugged and touched at the drop of a hat, or the opening of a children’s hospital ward, at least – and she’s officially now one of our greatest ever Britons, so there you are. Maybe before the service the PR people said, ‘Go on, Ma’am, let yourself go; you’ll feel better for it, love. Think of Princess Di.’ And so she cried.

But it was more tempting to believe, at the time, that this was a tear shed for the rapidly dissolving edifice of which Queen Elizabeth II has been a dignified and admirable custodian. Certainly it has been a bad year for her, so far. Especially the last week or so. I assume there have been recent mornings when she could not bear to face the daily newspapers. Because it is only a matter of time before Roy Keane, Angus Deayton and Kylie Minogue’s famous bottom are revealed to have enjoyed coke-fuelled, below-stairs, gay and straight nine-in-a-bed romps at Buckingham Palace. Perhaps there is room in this latest circus, too, for Stephen Byers, clad only in his dark grey socks.

Nothing would surprise us any more about the House of Windsor and its simpering attendants, by which I mean those celebrity hangers-on as much as the valets, butlers, under-butlers, deputy assistant under-butlers and the chap – God knows what his title was – who filled Princess Margaret’s bath each evening with Victory gin and vermouth.