Women do themselves no favours by their obsession with the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Stick her mugshot on any women’s magazine cover, ten years after that ghastly funeral, and sales are guaranteed to rise by at least 20 percent.

Anything on the TV that remotely refers to this most wonderful example of top totty (after Marilyn Monroe) is certain to rivet their attention, leaving grumpy old blokes silenced and baffled. They’d rather be watching The Last Days of Adolf Hitler, or Gruesome Air Disasters, or The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, or The History of Sheds, on the History Channel.

The fascination is strange, and it grips even the very highest levels of female intelligence.

The folks at Woman’s Weekly must be laughing all the way to the bank, with their multi-page nonsensical in-depth feature on “If Diana had lived”. By in-depth, we mean: plumbing the depths.

So, what if Diana had lived?

For a start, she would look a lot older – and that is probably what lies at the heart of the female fascination, where the psychology points to programming that seeks eternal youth (or at least try to preserve the original beauty). Like the dead of two world wars, she’s frozen in time. Don’t we all wish for that, so long as we’re not dead?

Charles and Camilla would still be living a lie, the kids would have been shuttled back and forth between stately and not-so-stately homes for ten years, and the world’s most famous dysfunctional family would be in an even greater mess. Prince Philip could have expired from stress, Her Majesty might have taken early retirement, and Princess Anne might be ruling instead.

On the other hand, there might have been fewer land mines scattered across the planet.

William and Harry would have long ago fled to Namibia, or Iraq, or anywhere to escape the paparazzi. Dodi and Diana might have created children closely related to the bizarre Egyptian bazaar trader, Mohammed Al Fayed. Not in the line of succession, perhaps – but at least it would have widened the available gene pool.

What’s beyond doubt is that newspapers and magazines would still be daily transfixed by that blonde bombshell. Given what’s happened to us since she departed, perhaps that would be no bad thing.

We liked her because she seemed to be the acceptable face of monarchy (just as the equally-flawed John Kennedy is remembered as the handsome, optimistic face of US politics); she provided an authentic link between Us and Them; then she told us that British monarchy was an inhuman institution unfit for normal people; then she was killed.

And then Diana’s billionaire brother buried her on a privately-owned island, turning her into a martyr and an unreachable icon. You have to take your hat off to The Establishment. They really know how to do Events.

Meanwhile, there are opinion-formers in New Zealand who argue that, since Prince Charles is dotty (because he might talk to trees) we should take his Accession to the throne as a good reason to declare a republic. That argument makes as much sense as the notion that we should be a republic because George III was nuts. If Charles waives his right, and his sensitive son William assumes the mantle, these daft commentators will be left speechless, and the Establishment will win again. We don’t need the English Establishment, but we deserve clearer thinking from those media controllers who seek to change our country.