Surprisingly, I don’t really have a problem with the Queen. If anything she deserves some sympathy for being born into an unenviable lifestyle. I don’t have any particular affection for her either. In fact I am pretty neutral on the person (lets face it, she had as much choice in the matter of her being in charge of us as we did) its the whole concept of hereditary constitutional power which I have a problem with.

But even so I appreciate that having her and the erstwhile Prince Phillipos of Greece and Denmark visit the town is a big event, worthy of full coverage in the local papers. She is after all the second most important person to visit the town. (I found Trevor Brooking’s name in the visitors’ book in the Town Hall once. Nuff said.)

But there is ‘full coverage’ and there is ‘over-the-top’.

Full coverage would be the Crawley News giving us 7 pages, containing 20-odd photos, four of them in colour.

Over-the-top would be the Crawley Observer giving us 18 pages this week, containing at least 120 photos, all in colour apart from a few archive shots of the previous visit, and at the end the ominous phrase “More pictures in next week’s Crawley Observer”

Amongst all the fuss I looked Phil up on the Internet and found my favourite what-I-learned-today piece of trivia… Prince Philip was born on a kitchen table in Corfu, which is even more unusual than the fact that he is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers.