I'm glad Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are to marry. Their sitting in separate pews and entering by separate doors threatened to become a national embarrassment and an international laughing stock. I wish them both a long and happy life together, but I won't raise a glass on the wedding day or dab my eyes with a hanky in a sudden rush of emotion. I just want the situation tidied up. Like many people, I remember Diana with affection. I worked with her several times and watched with something akin to horror as the young virgin with stars in her eyes turned into a manipulative, wronged wife. That she had affairs is a matter of record, but they occurred only after that moment when she realised her marriage could not work because, as she put it, there was one person too many in it. Did she overhear Charles speaking lovingly to Camilla from the honeymoon yacht, as Andrew Morton claimed in his book Diana: Her True Story? We will never know. Was she a neurotic who schemed to capture the heir to the throne and only pretended to be shy? That will remain a mystery too. People claim to know what goes on in the minds of the Royal Family but, apart from a tiny charmed circle, no-one knows any more than the rest of us and the charmed circle never speak. That is the price of their membership. So it is up to each one of us to believe what our instincts tell us. I choose to remember the girl who went to Wales in a silly hat and gazed in amazement at the crowds come to cheer her. I believe Diana was, in the beginning, a warm and loving human being. What she was not was the pliant airhead some people imagined her to be, a "nice, well-brought-up gel" who would do her duty, produce the necessary heirs and then retire to a mink-lined cupboard, to be wheeled out on ceremonial occasions. But I feel we all bear a measure of guilt for what happened to Diana and perhaps, also, to Charles. From the moment he came of marriageable age he was hounded to choose a wife. And not just any wife. Not the woman he loved. He must choose a virgin with a suitable face and lineage for the history books. That's what he did and it was a disaster all round, especially for the chosen bride. Now Diana is dead and time has moved on. Few people can want to see Prince Charles or Camilla keep up a pretence forever. I feel for the Queen, who, however much she maintains a regal bearing, is a mother who loves her son. Whatever she may feel about this marriage he is her first-born and when we lambaste him we wound her. So, let there be a wedding. It simply regularises the existing situation and if Camilla is to be HRH it takes away no lustre from Diana's memory. But if the Palace authorities have sense they won't rub our noses in this ceremony. It should happen quietly, or as quietly as the media will allow, no souvenir tea-towels or loving cups, no bunting in the Mall, no grinning pictures. I believe that the people who tell pollsters they want it to happen are not starry-eyed romantics who see Charles and Camilla as star-crossed lovers. They are, in the main, people who feel as I do, that the present mess has gone on long enough. The German newspaper, Bild Zeitung, hailed news of the engagement as "a great victory for love". You'll forgive me if I beg to disagree. Too many tears have littered its path for it to be a victory of any kind except perhaps, after this lapse of time, for common sense. * Denise Robertson cannot enter into any personal correspondence. ********** Law on horses required More lunacy heard on Radio 4. Travellers near Cardiff keep horses. That's fine and part of their culture. Except that their encampment is near a huge housing estate and travellers keep a lot of horses, apparently free to roam at will. Residents spoke of 50 horses stampeding down the streets, others moaned about having to clear up the dung. There's only so much manure your rhubarb patch can take. The horses break down garden fences, peer in windows, bring down clothes lines and generally cause mayhem. Some people are really afraid of them. The travellers say that horses are a means of trade and are frequently used as dowries, hence the need to accumulate. To them it's an integral part of their way of life. You would imagine that a local council would be able to sort this - demand the horses are kept under control and keep the streets clear of horse dung, but the estate dwellers say the council does nothing except keep taking their council tax. This week we heard that the Government is creating a new offence every three days. They've dealt with everything from obstructing fire extinguishers to peddling lollies in the Royal Parks. Would it be beyond their wit to create a law that says if you keep horses you can't let them harrass people? And if there already is such a law - and I suspect there may be - why isn't it being implemented? ********** No reason for a rejection The Samaritans have been turned down for a lottery grant on the grounds that they're not helping "the disadvantaged". If feeling suicidal doesn't render you disadvantaged, in Heaven's name what does? Forecast over sex device A machine that promises women sexual satisfaction at the touch of a button has long been the stuff of fantasy. Remember Barbarella? From now on, or so we're promised, flowers and foreplay will be things of the past. All you need is £9,000 to have an electrode planted in your spine and your man can give you an orgasm at the touch of a button. Let me make a prediction. Two years from now the Orgasmatron, as it's called, will have joined the sandwich-toaster, the exercise bike and the nasal hair clipper at the back of the pantry shelf. ********** Quote Sarah Jessica Parker, star of Sex and the City, is to market her own fragrance. She says: "Fragrance is for those days when you don't have time to shower." What will it be called then? Kill the Pong? ********** Medical studies for cash Two universities, Buckingham and Brunel, are in talks to set up a new graduate medical school for students willing to pay £20,000 a year. Medical schools are so over-subscribed that your chance of getting a place is only one in five so there'll be plenty of takers, from here and from overseas. An official estimate says Britain will be short of 25,000 doctors by 2022. If the Buckingham/Brunel venture proves lucrative other universities will start to wonder why they too can't charge through the nose. Which means that however many doctors we have in the future, you can be sure they were born to wealthy families. ********** Failure to heed a key warning In the summer of 2001, Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Farley became suspicious about a young Arab named Zacarias Moussaoui, who had applied for lessons in flying jumbo jets. This seemed such an unusual request that she took her concerns to her superiors but they waved them away. Coleen was working out what to do next when 9/11 occurred and she learned that Moussaoui was deeply involved. If her early concerns had been followed up a huge tragedy might have been averted. After 9/11 Coleen was sickened to hear her superiors say repeatedly that nothing could have been done to prevent the outrage. She knew that speaking out would jeopardise her own career, but speak out she did. Last week she told her story to Fergal Keane in the Taking a Stand slot. The programme was a testament to Coleen's courage and a terrible indictment of the supposedly most sophisticated intelligence network in the world. | 
