"It's not easy being Queen".............................

Rating: 3/10 (22 September 2007)

From reverence to ridicule,the Windsors have ridden the slippery spiral for the last thirty years.Only HM herself has retained the respect of her subjects whilst all about her have been losing it.Lumbered with Clueless Charlie,Aimless Andy and Pointless Camp Eddie one can only feel sympathy with her.When her estranged daughter - in - law dies the nation - encouraged by a power - mad media - falls into a form of hysteria,a folie en masse that was as inexplicable as it was embarrassing. The makers of "The Queen" have portrayed one of the most courageous and stubborn auto - didacts of the 20th century as a petulant cold schemer hiding behind a thin veneer of haughtiness.In a scene of risible unlikelihood she bursts into tears at the sight of a well - endowed stag (not the D of E).Mr J.Cromwell makes a fair fist of the Prince Consort himself.Both a supporter and a wholesale slaughterer of wildlife,he undoubtedly would have reached for his rifle rather than his handkerchief if confronted with such a magnificent creature. Diana Spencer must have felt she was marrying into "The Simpsons". I can't believe she was ever "in love" - whatever that means - with Bart - sorry - Charles Prince of Wales,surely one of the most spoiled,arrogant and self - obsessed men at ever drew breath in our fair isle.I suspect the idea rather than the actuality of marrying into the Royal Family drew her into their orbit.Whatever the reason,both she and they luived to regret it. I hardly believed a word of this purely fictional account of how her death affected - or - more properly - failed to affect her mega - rich socially isolated in - laws. Tony Blair and his Champagne Socialist wife are comic book figures,Blair himself only redeemed by his respect for the Queen as opposed to the institution of Monarchy. Alistair Campbell is worthy of being roundly hissed and booed by a pantomime audience.Poor,silly,beautiful,vain and betrayed by the most powerful family in the land,Diana Spencer deserved a better epitaph than the lugubrious hyberbole spoken by her brother in Westminster Abbey that September day.It is a measure of the times that he was cheered to the echo then but has few friends in society now due to his appalling exploitation of the memory of his "beloved" sister.