Unemployed royal Prince Charles gets rather irritable during his ‘time off’. Whilst on a skiing holiday in the Swiss alps he’s had a go at the media stalkers who follow him wherever he goes, like flies round the proverbial.

Charlie called them all ‘bloody people’ apparently. Not much of an insult that, when you think about it. In fact some might suggest that it is complimentary to them. But it was enough to outrage the mass bank of hackers and voyeurs watching on. They are easily offended, the press, bless ‘em. Not used to such vitriolic language.

Here at Blighty we almost sympathise with Charlie. We might even back him up when he says of BBC’s royal correspondent, Nicolas Witchell, that: ‘I can’t bear that man, anyway. He’s so awful, he really is.’ He’s a royal correspondent for a living after all, he can’t be up to much.

Ultimately, however, our sympathy is rather muted. Because Charlie needs the media. Without it he is as much history as those royals before him, who actually had a purpose. Blighty are all for the media packing up their 500 millimetre zoom lenses, HB pencils and bottles of cheap whisky and leaving the Windsors alone forever. But then they really would be a pointless institution. What’s a soap opera without the camera?