OUR country is excellent at putting on a show and especially pageantry.

It’s what makes us a great tourist destination and with the pound at near parity with the dollar, we’re an increasingly cheap destination for Americans seeking a dose of Royalty, fanfare and celebrity princesses.

When you consider that in terms of land mass, you can fit nearly three United Kingdoms into the state of Texas, it’s more understandable how Americans see our country as a cute theme park rather than a serious player on the world’s stage.

So, when tearing up at the documentaries about our late Queen’s long life of service, watching the adulation of members of the public for a woman they never met, thrilling to the sounds of the pipers, the trumpets and bells, I permit my inner royalist to emerge from its republican outer casing.

Maybe, I say to myself, the tourist income our royals bring into the country is reason enough to keep them in their turrets and stately homes.

Maybe it’s enough to go along with being a ‘subject’, expected to stand up in the council chamber when somebody just representing the monarch walks in to start a meeting.

I relish the traditions, the ancient words, the centuries old music sung by contemporary voices. I love the colours, the textures the sounds of these rites and rituals.

Feeling the past coexist with the present is spine-tingling – ‘proclamations’ by shouty men in feather hats are exciting – who knew!?

But I despise the literal entitlement that inherited power brings. As our Prime Minister Liz Truss once said, I ‘do not believe that people should be born to rule’ before calling for the abolition of the monarchy. (By the way, Liz Truss is a sleeper agent and the Liberal Democrats will deploy her shortly.)

Do I envy the royals their private gilded prisons, their security guards and their daily fear of kidnap and attack?

No, not one bit.

Accepting kisses and hugs from total strangers in crowds is the unsavoury price these folk pay for their privilege and it’s not one I’d choose.

This is why those skinny women who choose to marry into a high-ranking royal life intrigue me. Can the gorgeous clothes, never worrying about paying the bills, knowing the best healthcare in the world is always available to you and your children, can those things be enough?

I am, though, going to miss having a female monarch.

For 70 years Queen Elizabeth, firmly and elegantly placed herself in the centre. She had the job while her husband Philip was the decoration. Anecdotes are bubbling through about her wit and humour and I can only hope that King Charles III is as firmly subversive as his mother. I do hope the following story is true!

On 7th December 2011, our late Queen formally opened the Rolls Building in Central London. Melissa Clark, a solicitor, was in the court room at the time, and following the announcement of the Queen’s death, she tweeted: ‘When HM Queen came to open the Rolls Building, she was ushered into a room in which were waiting all the judges.

‘She looked at the Ermine-clad serried ranks of Chancery judges, smiled and said crisply ‘Where are the women?’

A look of panic crossed multiple faces until someone saw three female chancery specialist district judges in a dark corner.

‘There they are,’ he shouted. So, The Queen went to talk to them. What a woman.’