When I wrote a slightly bitchy profile of Prince William for The Big Issue in 2005 I got months of hassle from his suprisingly rousable fanbase. Not just months and months of letters, faxes and phone-calls but umbrella-brandishing old women turning up on the doorstep to remonstrate with me.

Someone very close to his old man put the boot in with my boss, too. It was made known that offence had been taken at a comparison I had made between William and Kenyan antelopes, and that my observation about his thinning hair was the part that had gone down particularly badly.

So I am amused by the way the homeless/magazine/baldness themes have coincided again for Wills with today’s hair-gate scandal. I’m sure the photo is entirely authentic and natural. I don’t believe for a moment that the future king of England has been touched-up by a homeless man…