WHAT do you give the kid who has everything? Apart, that is, from a non-bruising clip round the ear-hole to teach the spoiled brat some humility.
Ladies and gentlemen, you may like to consider David and Victoria Beckham, and their latest gift for their one-year-old, Romeo. Or then again, you may not.
I am trying to stop talking about the Beckhams, honestly I am, but every week something about them takes my breath away.
This time it's the pseudo-rustic pine cot they have had hand-made for Romeo, to match the one they have already installed in the bedroom of his five-year-old big brother, Brooklyn.
The bed looks like a cross between a cartoon design for a Disney dwarf, and a Van Gogh oil painting.
Romeo's name is carved on his bedstead, presumably in case he forgets it, and craftsmen have also engraved into the wood an image of Becks playing football, together with a pair of boots and a team scarf.
Style leaders take note: the look is completed with an England duvet cover and a matching pillowcase.
Now, I don't know what on earth that intruder had in mind when he was discovered in the grounds of Beckingham Palace this week, having shinned over an eight-foot wall with a petrol can in his hand.
But you can live in hope.
BRITAIN'S other Royal Family seem to have much more modest tastes. Prince William clearly can't be tempted by haute couture of the kind Posh gets chauffeured home by the shedload.
He was spotted this week wearing scruffy torn jeans and scuffed trainers that would surely have had metrosexual Becks in a panic attack had he been asked to wear them.
And don't think a fancy meal will win you any favours with the Windsors, either.
Shockingly enough, Wills' brother Harry has been seen ducking into McDonalds for a burger and fries during a lull at a recent polo match, so it seems the way to his heart may be through his rapidly silting-up arteries.
If the doomsayers are to be believed, Harry's love of fast food makes him very much a man of the people.
We are, after all, a nation whose addiction to junk food means obesity rates are rocketing, and we are regularly warned that if we don't take our snouts out of the trough from time to time, we will start to all look like our man-mountain American cousins.
This seems already to be happening in Bournemouth, where the council may have to fork out £200,000 for a bigger furnace to accommodate the vast coffins that have started rolling up the conveyor belt to glory.
Not many people know this, but most modern-day cremators are about 30in wide, and new furnaces are now being built around 10in wider.
What's more, reinforced trolleys are being developed that will be able to carry loads of up to 45 stones.
The Windsors, I feel sure, are unlikely to need such services. They appear to be naturally svelte, and if memory serves me right, they tend to get buried anyway, in a family plot which I'm sure has room enough to accommodate the most generously-proportioned Royal.
But if there's ever a quiet day at the crem, in between us all dropping like flies, I wonder if Bournemouth's new improved facilities might be able to accommodate a certain ill-judged piece of bedroom furniture? I think we should be told.
Updated: 11:06 Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article