The John Blunt column

THE official excuse for it was a "thank you" for their support for the work of the Prince's Trust.

But, really, it seems the reason for Prince Charles having the Spice Girls as guests for tea at his Highgrove estate was so he could give their fan, young Prince Harry, a treat.

And it was, no doubt, assumed at some royal confab that it would do no harm either for the image of the House of Windsor - now evidently destined for survival's sake to become more modern and Diana-like - to have these trendy songbirds cooing once again by royal appointment.

But, really, I do not know where the Prince or his advisers get their ideas from if they seriously believe that having this meretricious bunch home for tea will do anything for the royal approval rating.

Are they not aware what a trivial, publicity-seeking stunt it appears?

And have they wondered how many parents will approve of indulging a 13-year-old by fixing up for him to have a tea party with group of vulgar young women whose particular talent is to appear tarty, mainly through the process of leaping about to music while only half-dressed?

Transiently trendy they may be, but if Prince Charles is after public relations points for being "with it" himself, I do not think he will have earned many from those of us who consider that there was too much of the "common" about this contrived display of the common touch.

Careless-in-the-community

THE candour of ex-nurse Dr Peter Morrall, of Leeds University, who yesterday called for a return of the lunatic asylums and hit out at so-called patients' rights advocates, was refreshing - though the sheer sanity of his remarks to the Royal College of Nursing's congress must have had liberal Care-in-the- Community supporters reaching for their tranquillisers. Too late, however, for policewoman Nina MacKay whose killer, schizophrenic knifeman Magdi Elgizouli, was last week sent to Rampton indefinitely after earlier being allowed to walk the streets despite his horrific record of previous attacks on people. But though the fact that every year 1,000 mental patients kill themselves and some 50 murders are committed by others released into the community is self-evident support for Dr Morall's attack on the theorists in mental health care who even refuse to use the word "mad", perhaps something more needs to be done in connection with the review of Care in the Community that the government has ordered.

And that is the naming, shaming and sacking of the doctors, nurses, probation officers, social workers or whoever have a hand in releasing into the community mental patients who prove to be a murderous risk to society.

Does that ever happen in the all-too-frequent cases like that of PC Mackay - when it's all too late? If it did, I am sure the Care in the Community proponents would think much longer and harder each time before they allowed anyone's release.

We just want the numbers

THAT the BBC is said to be planning to axe the excruciatingly-awful Saturday night The National Lottery Big Ticket show is wonderful news - even if several millions pounds of your licence money has been squandered on a flop unethically aimed at making those Camelot fat cats even richer.

The programme was, after all, so bad that I am sure millions of people stopped buying its scratch cards out of sheer dread that they might end up on it.

And it is no wonder that up to 40 per cent of the studio audience left during the show - it was so trivial, contrived and confusing that it made the rest of the generally-poor Saturday night TV fare seem highbrow.

But let's hope that the TV bosses now get the message about covering the National Lottery draw. We don't want game shows, song or dance or "news" clips on the latest good-but-generally-questionable causes to benefit.

If they would just get on with it and give us the numbers. That's all we want.

Comic Elton was spot on

I'M KICKING myself for not videoing comedian Ben Elton's savage but spot-on satire of Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia".

Still, just you see, it will be repeated again and again - marking the moment when, less than a year into the New Labour government's reign, people began to baulk at its efforts to re-brand Britain.

Cunningly, from his Middle East excursion, Mr Blair seeks to tar this disparagement with the same "unadulterated snobbery" which he accused academic critics of over their attack on so-called Cry Baby Britain, which they see epitomised in the "mob grief" over the death of Princess Diana.

But the Prime Minister, I think, has been rumbled. It's not so much the trendy-pop-designer style or content of trendy Cool Britannia (sort of Mick-Hucknall-with-a-Dyson-vacuum-cleaner image) that people object to - though many are upset at the junking of British traditions - but yet another instance of them being told what to think by New Labour.

Ben Elton's mockery captured the growing irritation so well that, if I were William Hague, I'd be setting fire to my baseball cap and ringing him up with an unrefusable offer to become my speech-writer.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.