Royal Purple

Daveybloke has taken time out from his day job as a weapons salesman to have a bit of a burble about Hilary Mantel. Two weeks ago at a London Review of Books event, Mantel gave a speech titled "Royal Bodies", in which she said some unflattering things about the latest model of Windsor foetusmobile and - which is the same thing, only worse - about the media's treatment of the royal circus animals. The British press, with its customary respect for nuanced debate, hauled on its hobnailed moral armour and lumbered feet first to the more pregnant lady's defence. Daveybloke, nominal employer of the News Corporation flunkey Jeremy C Hunt and diluter of Leveson by the grace of St Rupert, had little choice but to join in the chorus of righteous indignation; though doubtless he was genuinely affronted on a personal level by Mantel's implied sneer at bland, custom-built plastic mannequins. Indeed, such was Daveybloke's outrage on the Duchess of Cambridge's behalf that he managed to get her title wrong: he referred to her, with cringeworthy Blairiness, as "Princess Kate". Fortunately, one of the servants did have sufficient presence of mind to inform him that Hilary Mantel writes books.