And still it keeps on coming. We had barely absorbed the first wave of revelations – jewellery mashed, dog bowls smashed, a brother trashed – before the new tsunami of tattle related to Prince Harry’s imminent book Spare broke over our fevered faces. Dissing duchesses getting aerated over hormones, teenage deflowerings in desolate fields, cocaine ingested by noble noses, accusations of ginger bastardy, attempted derailing of putative wicked stepmothers and maternal approval from beyond the grave for the 16-toilets lifestyle ­– the burbling stream of confession never stops. Sometimes it feels as though Prince Harry is using the world’s media as his therapy couch – and sometimes it’s like having a drunk crying on your shoulder and telling you his life story in a bar. Though serious-minded types may turn their backs with a moue of distaste, speaking as someone who has been a hack since she was too young to vote, I can’t get enough of this sort of rubbish.

If this was many other countries, the brothers might well have shot each other. As it is, some dry goods got damaged

And neither, it seems, can the Guardian, who helpfully opened the floodgates yesterday when one ‘Martin Pengelly in New York’ obtained a copy ‘amid stringent pre-launch security around the book’. ‘Spare is a remarkable volume… Harry is unsparing in his recounting of intensely private scenes and conversations in which the altercation between the two princes forms a startling passage.’ The brotherly bust-up is camper than I imagined – more Bette Davis and Joan Crawford than Elizabeth I and Bloody Mary – while William’s parting shot to a prostrate Harry made me imagine an unwritten Smith’s song: ‘Harold, as you lay there on the dog bowl looking feckless/Who could blame me if I’d felt like ripping off your necklace?/But your fall was accidental as in kitchenette we barrelled/I don’t love you anymore – but I didn’t attack you, Harold.’ Though it’s unedifying, it made me kind of fall in love with being English again – it’s just so silly.There’s a reason why we produced comic operetta while other cultures produced po-faced operatic epics of love and death; if this was many other countries, the brothers might well have shot each other. As it is, some dry goods got damaged.

Founded in the earnest desire to spread a radical message of equality and liberty, we have already seen the Guardian’s decline into a frivolous viper’s nest where decent writers are hounded out of their jobs and the editor hires her husband to write columns asking ‘Must We Settle For Fanny?’ Now their pre-publication kerfuffle brings them officially into the Californian court-in-exile of the Sussexes, not quite on the elevated level of fairy godfather Elton John but well above Groom of the Stool Omid Scobie.

Of course, they have to dress up the fact that, by breaking this story, they’ve nailed their colours to a Heat-flavoured ship of fools, hence yesterday’s scolding headline, ‘Harry’s allegations are not just about a royal fist fight – but the very real dangers of hereditary power’. It’s doubtful that when the paper’s respected editor CP Scott declared in 1921 ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’ he was imagining a radiant future in which his publication became a PR sheet for a petulant princeling accusing his brother of breaking his baubles.

And indeed, when clever Mr Caxton set up his printing press way back in 1476, bringing an ignorant world such illuminating works as The Canterbury Tales, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and The Book Of The Knight in the Tower (thought to contain the earliest verses of the Bible to be printed in English) he can never have imagined that one day his wonderful creation would be the conduit by which a prince of the blood royal could inform millions of strangers that ‘I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away’ as he recounts losing his virginity behind a pub.

Though I loved my late parents very much, I did think several times during the pandemic ‘My word, I’m glad they’re not alive now!’ Reading this sentence, the Queen’s immediate family may well experience the same emotion; interestingly, the memoir mentions that it was written before her death. Would anyone in their right mind really want their dear old nan to read that?

It’s the revelations about his time as a soldier – the first time he seemed happy – which have risen above this sumptuous banquet of gossip and made this cavalcade of calumny something serious. Though distinguished soldiers such as Richard Kemp have decried the prince’s frankness, it was the one part I liked, imagining all the SJW Sussex Squad cheerleaders becoming confused by their White Knight writing of his kills, ‘It seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number. So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me.’ And so it shouldn’t – the Taliban are fascists. No amount of political correctness can make him renounce those years, and this is probably because he knows that this was the only time – along with the subsequent Invictus Games, involving injured veterans – when he truly did anything useful with his life.

When he called the late Queen ‘my commander in chief’ he said it with real relish – whereas Meghan, with her barren cultural hinterland, appeared to find it mind-blowing that a woman could be both granny and ruler. But such seriousness is the exception; for the rest it’s showing and telling, kissing and selling. How long can it go on? Well, Joan Collins has written seven memoirs, though admittedly she has the advantage of being self-made, witty and an excellent writer. But in a world where Speaking Your Truth is ever more subjective, he could conceivably milk it for another couple of volumes.

In a press release advertising the memoir, Penguin Random House boasts: ‘With its raw, unflinching honesty, Spare is a landmark publication full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief. Spare takes readers immediately back to one of the most searing images of the 20th century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow – and horror. As Diana, Princess of Wales, was laid to rest, billions wondered what the princes must be thinking and feeling – and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is his story at last.’

What would Diana have made of this memoir? I think she might well have slapped the princely legs somewhat smartly – in the manner of a pushed-to-the-limit young mother in a supermarket queue – and said ‘Now you’ve got something to cry about!’ In her absence, I predict that this bottomless swill-bucket of snitching will continue to delight and appal us for some time to come.