What’s in a name?

New York

I Married a Princess is among the most embarrassing reality shows to have appeared on American television, which makes it unique in view of the garbage which fill the airways 24 unrelenting hours per day. The format is a simple one: a man and his wife and their small children spend their days being filmed saying nice things to each other. Children’s nappies are changed, the husband goes shopping for food, the wife cooks and opens some mail — it was so boring I had to turn it off. The banal horror takes place in Hollywood and the star is ‘Princess’ Catherine Oxenberg, with her real-life actor hubby, whom I’ve never heard of, and their children. The whole thing was so hammy, so cretinous in its banality, so half-witted, I almost yearned to see Charles Kennedy with his little son in his arms calling unstoppably for more social justice for Britain’s yobs and minorities.

Mind you, this is not the point. I’ve done some lousy things in my life, but watching the life of a Hollywood brain-dead couple is not one of them. The reason this particular horror caught my eye was Catherine Oxenberg, someone I used to know along with her family. And, if memory serves, Catherine is as much a princess as my own little girl is. Her mother Elizabeth is one, but her father Howard Oxenberg, now retired I assume, was a 7th Avenue rag trader who made good but did not exactly make it into the European Gotha. Yet Catherine, who once played Diana in an American mini-series about Chuck and Di, is billed as a real-life princess, and who am I to dispute Hollywood’s claims? After all, Michael Jackson himself has named one of his own children Prince Michael, which should get the kid a leg up if and when he decides to meet his cousins Freddy and Ella any time soon.