My local newspaper reports that three real life princesses have gone undercover in my home town of Chelmsford. They have become temporary “Essex girls” for a BBC reality TV series starting tonight (which may be available on iPlayer, probably UK only).

I couldn’t help wondering if my beautiful wife was one of the princesses. Not for this year’s series, but perhaps for last year’s? If so, she hasn’t admitted it to her chosen man, as the princesses are supposed at the end of the series. But she certainly looks the part – and all the more so on our wedding day last October. She is surely in real life the Principessa Lorenza de’ Medici, granddaughter of the last king of Italy.