I’ve agonised over this post. I’ve wondered if I should ever confess to my dreadful, horrible, secret. Ok, deep breath, here I go – I used to be a monarchist.

Ok, ok, so I was 12 years old at the time. Charles had just married Diana, the world was swooning with the romance of it all, we’d just beaten the Argentineans in Falklands and can I just repeat the fact that I was 12 again? Things are much simpler when you’re 12. The world is a more orderly, safer, place, mostly because you’re inexperienced (translation – bloody pig-ignorant).

What happened next came as a terrible shock. I grew up.

As I grew up, both physically and mentally, I realised a few home truths about the Royal Family. They’re a bunch of berks. They’re either total snobs and/or prigs. Having Prince Charles lecture the nation on anything like morality is grounds for hysterical laughter and then an instant republic. The only problem with that, as the Australians know, is that a republic would result in some former failed politician being elevated out of the House of Commons and given a fat salary for services rendered to his cronies.

The reason for all of this breast-beating is the news this week that Prince William is to marry Kate Middleton. You might have heard a bit about this by now. It’s already caused a vast amount of effusive gibberish to be spewed out all over the place and the Daily Mail will be having a collective orgasm of royalist twaddle every day leading up to the wedding next year.

Now, I wish them all the best. Young Bill’s had a rotten hand dealt to him and he deserves some happiness, while Kate’s been patient and has stuck things out well. I just hope that they manage to buck the trend from Bill’s family (four marriages in the previous generation, three of which ended very badly).

My biggest problem with all the nauseating drivel that’s being written about the wedding is that we’re in the middle of some of the most severe austerity measures we’ve ever had in this country thanks to Gordo’s mismanagement of the economy. A royal wedding costs a lot of money. Why can’t they tie the knot at the chapel of Windsor Castle? Why does the world have to buried in the mound of cheap commemorative plates and mugs that are now being painted (and probably misspelled) in sweatshops around the world?

Ok, so I’m not a monarchist any more. What does that make me? Easy. I’m a Roundhead!