Mandy Plays Kick The Middletons

The attitude adopted towards the Middleton family by the Daily Mail exemplifies the ability of Paul Dacre’s obedient hackery to play both sides of the field: first, they expend significant effort leering over younger daughter Pippa, to the extent of nicknaming her “Her Royal Hotness”, before expending an equal amount of effort trying to pull the family down a peg or two for being “too Royal”.

A scene some viewers may find distressing

Added to this is the undercurrent of snark aimed particularly at Carole Middleton, reminding readers at every opportunity that she used to be a member of British Airways’ cabin crew (and that husband Mike used to be a mere flight dispatcher – oh, the ignominy!). Then they wonder why readers upbraid them for talking crap, because there’s nowt wrong with either job.

And cabin crew and dispatchers are rather more productive than sharp-clawed Glenda Amanda Platell, who has joined the fray today. “Don't let the Middletons relegate the Royals” protests this citizen of, er, not the UK, following up her attack last year when musing “I worry the Middletons really do believe they are royalty”, but only because they got better invites than she did.

Mandy is worried that new Royal addition Prince George of Cambridge may be getting “a normal childhood”, which would never do, because, as she reverently tells her readers, “like it or not, he is not an ordinary child: he is our future King”. What does she want the Middletons to do, tug their sodding forelocks to the kid? Do they have to walk backwards when exiting the room?

William and Kate have decamped chez Middleton of their own volition: they have gone there because they want to. Moreover, the Royals, not that Ms Platell seems to have noticed, are all away on holiday right now, so anyone left in London would be stuck with the remaining servants and no family members – the kind of thing that Diana, Princess of Wales encountered all too often.

She was, of course, Wills’ Mum, so he will have that in mind when deciding where best to bring up his new son. Meanwhile, Mandy is left grasping at straws as she frets that the Middletons saw the Royal Baby before Charles and Camilla, and that Pippa – who clearly also needs bringing down a peg or two – arrived at the hospital before Prince Harry, as if he was fussed.

Yet Ms Platell is not through carping: “It’s not even as if the Bucklebury mansion was Kate’s childhood home, filled with those precious memories of her own upbringing” she muses. Doesn’t the Daily Mail celebrate those who have made it through sheer hard work any more, then? Like Carole Middleton, who started out from a maisonette in Southall? No, it seems, not when they are so full of whingeing envy.

That Amanda Platell has not made it is not someone else’s fault. Get over it.