TO mark the 50th anniversary of her crowning, the Queen desperately needed a gesture to prove that the monarchy is still relevant. Then she hit on a brilliant idea.

"I know, Philip!" she exclaimed, nearly tripping over the two footmen engaged in a passionate clinch against her writing desk. "One'll make Prince Michael of Kent a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order."

Who says Her Majesty is out of touch with ordinary Britain? Her subjects speak of little other than the need to reward Prince Michael's tireless public service. At an Acomb bus stop only the other day, I heard a chap telling his wife: "I know he's a knight commander, but it's about time he was bumped up to a GCVO."

So well done Brenda, and all who advise her. Just the trick. By dishing out these meaningless trinkets of privilege, the Queen has managed to remind everyone: 1. what a lot of useless hangers-on there are in the royal family; 2. how the monarchy is stuck in the past; and 3. why we could happily make do without them.

If I had made these statements a year ago, a royalist mob would have probably garrotted me with bunting. They were delirious over the success of the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

But that high was followed by the terrible downer of the butler trials, and all the sordid revelations that followed. Buckingham Palace was revealed to be worse than most sink estates, beset by allegations of theft, drug deals and rape.

The Royal Family's popularity is ebbing away, and they don't have the Queen Mother to fall back on. Her favourite grandchild, Prince Charles, is widely held to be a liability.

His response: to write himself a job description 50 years too late. Charles would do more to enhance his public image by cutting back on a lifestyle so extravagant that a servant squeezes toothpaste onto the princely toothbrush every morning. I'd happily pen him a self-help guide: Heir On A Shoestring.

So a lot of House of Windsor hopes rest on Prince William, whose 21st birthday interview last week revealed him to be a sensationally average young man.

But soon he too will have to face embarrassing stories about his private life. Unless, that is, he never has sex before marriage, drinks too much or makes an unguarded personal or political comment.

What a horrible thing for us to do, forcing someone to be king. Can't Wills go to the Court of Human Rights and demand to have a choice of career? There must be a lot of call for a cider-drinking, Swahili-speaking history of art graduate.

Even royalists accept that the whole institution is ripe for downsizing. There is a lot of talk of a bicycling monarchy. That conjures up the horrific thought of Prince Edward in Lycra, but at least it would keep them all within a five-mile radius of central London.

Instead of handing out more daft titles, the Queen should surf the zeitgeist by launching Royal Big Brother. Shove all the dukes, earls, princes and princesses into a wing of Buck House and broadcast their antics to the nation, 24 hours a day.

TV viewers would decide their fate. All those who lay about on the tatty chaise longues regally quaffing wine and touching up the servants would soon be voted into the real world. And if anyone remained, they would be offered a renewed contract with The Firm.

We'd be down to the Queen and one corgi before you could say Davina.

Updated: 11:30 Wednesday, June 04, 2003