HOLIDAY snaps tend to be interesting mostly to those who partook of the holiday. Yet we've all imposed our photos on friends and family, and had the favour returned.

Not many people's holiday mementoes fill page after page in the national newspapers. And it is a rare day indeed when the television schedules are altered to fit in a personal holiday programme - on both BBC1 and ITV.

Yet all of this happened this week, thanks to Prince William's gap-year adventure in Chile. The unleashing of so much coverage - most of it on the slippery side of obsequious - serves to remind us just how much newspapers and television have served and supported the monarchy down the years.

At the beginning of the last century, newspapers were happy to gild the Royal myth, adding the sparkle and hiding the stains. This social deference was felt to be the job of newspapers, as illustrated by Lord Northcliffe writing to Edward VII's private secretary: "We shall be very glad to be told what to print and what to omit."

Newspapers remained on bended knee for many years after that - though the rise and fall of Princess Diana led to a different sort of Royal coverage, as journalists such as Andrew Morton sought out uncomfortable truths behind the facade.

After Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, the media mostly went into uncontrollable spasms of grief. This was probably fair enough, reflecting the solemn and shocked mood of many - though by no means all - people in the country.

Once the shock subsided, coverage of the Royals went back to its more muted ways - fitting, it could be said, the dreary nature of its subject. But this week, there has been much noise again, if about precious little.

Because Prince William is young, handsome and reminds everyone of his mother, the reaction to whatever he does is amplified many times. Depending on your personal leanings, headlines in the Daily Mail such as: "Why we all love William" will either fill you with pride or make your stomach wobble a little. More telling, though, was what followed in brackets - "(and why his mother would be so proud of what he's doing for the Royal Family)".

Seeing as Diana fell out with various members of the Royal Family and, some might say, had her life both heightened and destroyed by contact with the Windsors, it is by no means certain that she would have welcomed what her eldest son is now "doing" for the Royals.

This week, we have seen Prince William carrying out assorted tasks, from cleaning a toilet to making porridge for fellow adventurers. He has, in photographs, obligingly held a hand in front of his face, so as to half obscure his dazzling smile.

What these pictures have done for William - and the Royals in general - is to elevate the personal above the institutional or political. We are not asked whether or not we approve or otherwise of the Royal Family. Instead, we are just invited to like and admire Prince William, an appealing enough young man, it seems - but we shouldn't really have personal feelings about the prince, or any other member of the Royal Family, come to that.

Our relationship with the Royals is impersonal and distant - it just appears different because of the chummy nature of much media coverage.

The teeny girls who now mob Prince William, or vote him sexiest boy in magazine polls, or laugh indulgently at his terrible Ali G impersonation, could grow up to be King William's subjects one day.

With luck, their present infatuation will by then have matured into something less adoring - but I wouldn't count on it. Just imagine all the fuss and nonsense there would be if we had a handsome, unmarried king. Dear me, it doesn't bear thinking about.