The Next Royal Baby

Now that Prince What’s-His-Name has made his fashionably late arrival and media royal womb watchers are all agog, it behooves a former member of the fraternity to offer the benefit of his experience to help them move on from their current trauma.

In the 1980s, as a woman's magazine editor duty-bound to run cover stories about the new baby’s super-celebrity grandmother, I published one showing her holding up Prince William, with a line reading "Princess Diana Faces the 'Terrible Twos' and Baby No. 2," based on nothing more than a suspicion that the royal timetable called for a backup prince sooner than later.

The day the issue came out, the Palace announced Diana’s second pregnancy, and I was besieged by phone calls from reporters about how we knew. To my shame I responded with exquisite bad taste, "Inside information."

Far-thinking royalty journalists should be marking their 2015 calendars since, even with the monarchy bench now three-deep, William and Kate are not likely to want to rear an only child.

Meanwhile, a retired member of the fraternity will be watching all the jubilation with pure pleasure at news that for a change doesn’t make him sick of the human race.

The Queen’s great grandson was only one of more than 300,000 babies born all over the world yesterday, but even just hours old, he is what used to be called a bundle of joy.

Update: The new prince is no longer nameless. He has three: George Alexander Louis, a long handle for such a short person but, as he grows, the media will find ways of shortening it. Prince Lou has a nice ring to it.