Anxiety over leaks may have been partly responsible for it being recorded just four days in advance.The Prince has told the Queen that he agrees a divorce is necessary but there was no word from the Princess – who yesterday took her sons, Princes William and Harry, to her gym in west London – on whether she would give her consent. It is understood that the ill-feeling generated by the Princess’s appearance on BBC’s Panorama programme last month was further inflamed by her decision on Sunday not to join the rest of the Royal Family for Christmas celebrations at Sandringham.Yesterday, amid tight security on the royal estate, trusted BBC technicians and cameramen filmed the Queen’s Speech in preparation for Monday’s broadcast. Ending speculation that the Royal Family might skip a generation because of Prince Charles’s public marriage humiliations, Buckingham Palace announced that the he had “no intention” of taking a wife, a prospect that could have led to a rift between the monarchy and the Church of England.
The announcement came in the wake of yesterday’s disclosure that the Queen had written to the Prince and Princess of Wales on Monday urging them to divorce as soon as possible. “We encourage graduates to ask searching questions during the interview procedure,” he adds.. The Prince of Wales gave the clearest signal to date that he intends to become King by announcing yesterday that he would not remarry after his anticipated divorce from Princess Diana. He was a bit crestfallen about this but it was a lucky escape, frankly, given that she started nagging him within minutes of their first meeting.

You wondered whether he was allergic to shrews, too.
By now, Simon was wearing Desperation by Faberge, the least aphrodisiac scent known to man. He started talking marriage to his next contact, a Liverpudlian clairvoyant, before they had even met. She expressed surprise at this, which wasn’t much of an advert for her powers, but unfortunately her vision of the future, such as it was, did not include warming Simon’s narrow bed.Most likeable of all was Robert Nelson, a single father sweetly anxious to find a mother for his two daughters. His date was at London Zoo, accompanied by a swarm of six tiny match-makers, all proposing marriage on their parents’ behalf, with the innocent tactlessness of childhood.

Robert himself seemed stunned by his good fortune – gabbling nervously about Gina’s good looks as if he’d expected to meet someone with her head in a sack. His only problem was finding the right moment to confess to a past that included a couple of check-ins at Her Majesty’s motels – a past which didn’t match the decent, devoted man you saw on screen.Susanna White observed all this with the same humane curiosity that she brought to her film about readers’ wives (she even provided Pete with a kind of historical mitigation, lest you judged him too harshly). Her only real lapse was a slightly mischievous hand with the accompanying music. Not so much because he was, as he put it himself, “no oil painting”, nor because he drives a three-wheeler and is a model railway enthusiast. But Simon lacked a certain ease of manner with women and, besides, the omens weren’t good for his first date: “I’m a little bit worried about the cats angle,” he said anxiously, “because I’m allergic to cats.” He needn’t have worried – he didn’t even get a sniff of Avril’s front parlour.

Prospects did not look much better for Simon Emery, living in a caravan beside his parents’ home. How about you?” The Royal Naval nurse who had to endure a detailed explanation of how her uniform would stiffen Pete’s resolve observed diplomatically that “He’s much younger than I thought he would be.” This was a euphemism for “infantile creep”. Presumably this was less hazardous than his conventional technique; he doesn’t like to talk too much, he confided, instead “I’ll dance behind them and give their bum a little squeeze or a slap and get a reaction.” Less hazardous for Pete, anyway; for the women unfortunate enough to draw Pete’s short straw in the legover lottery, a night of leaden innuendo stretched ahead – “Huur, those sausages aren’t very big, are they? I prefer mine with a bit more meat. To listen to him, though, there is nothing Pete can’t handle: “Restaurants, clubs, pubs, cinemas, you name it, I’m doing it.