Paul Holmes: She's beautiful, he's cool what's not to love

Britain is prepared for the fanfare. Photo / AP

The royal wedding. There's no point fighting it because it's going to be in your face everywhere now and why would you fight it anyway? Why would you be such a grumpy old sour puss as to grumble about William and Kate and all the splendour and pageantry and silly old customs and old men with funny titles that come on parade every time the British have one of these outings.

King Constantine, who has lived in exile in London for decades, says that William is a hell of a nice guy. You'd have to say that Kate seems a hell of a nice girl. She's beautiful. I mean, seriously beautiful. She has it all, you might say. Now she's got the next Prince of Wales. She's been patient and discreet and she's never put a foot wrong. Mind you, I see that the Middleton girls are known as the Wisteria Sisters - fragrant, beautiful and determined to climb.

Well, she got Prince William. And he carted his mother's engagement ring round Kenya for a couple of weeks in a backpack before slipping it on her finger. And the world loved him for it. How cool was that? And how cool was it seeing that beautiful ring again worn on the girl the son of Diana has chosen to marry?

And there is no doubt, Kate is going to be a beautiful princess and we haven't had one of those for a while. Camilla? Sorry. Zara Phillips? Too much of the stable about her.

Yes, I know, I'm a sucker for royal romance. And here we've got a wedding and the couple are beautiful and the world wants the day and the ceremony to be divine and romantic and wants William and Kate to be happy. But as Jerry Seinfeld told British television the other day, it's madness. It's just nonsense. It's just dress-ups. That's all royalty is now, dress-ups. He said that the British simply loved dressing up. That's why they have some of the best theatre in the world.

Yes, we know he's right. But we still want princes and princesses and magical royal weddings. And you only get one or two in a lifetime. And the last big one was fabulous but, of course, it all turned bad rather quickly and we had to come to terms with the realisation that, even in 1981, the royal family had arranged a marriage between the two great houses, Windsor and Spencer. There was no romance to it at all. Charles was a seasoned, jet-setting bachelor and Diana was a naive girl. They couldn't have hoped to please each other for long, thrown together as they were in to an impossible union. And all of that throwing yourself down the stairs stuff wouldn't have helped. God, she must have been lonely.

Having said that, the world loved Diana - as it now loves her elder son. The world is very pleased with him. Diana once said, when William was a mere boy, and I don't know where I read it, that the country was lucky to have William. That was a shrewd observation. He is the perfect kind of modern, senior royal. Down to earth, normal, flying choppers for the Search and Rescue, but royal nevertheless. You forget he roams round some of the most beautiful real estate in the world and will own it someday and someday wear the crown of England.

In fact I heard Kate's voice for the first time the other evening and was shocked, Kate sounds posher than he does. God knows where she got that voice. Never mind. She's beautiful, already one of the most beautiful royals ever, international opinion seems to think.

Some very serious commentators would have William supersede Charles into the top job. Charles has waited patiently but he's a bit blighted, really, and who knows what title he'll give that Camilla woman. But it's all become a slow process, this monarchy business. The Queen might have another 15 years in her. It's possible. That would have Charles becoming king in his mid-seventies - hardly a vigorous, modern look for the House of Windsor - and that in turn has William inheriting the throne in his mid-sixties.

A young King William and the gorgeous Queen Kate would be a stunning rejuvenation of the British monarchy. It won't happen, of course. It's too hard. And who's going to tell Charles that no one wants him.

Either way, there's plenty of time to think about it. The Queen has this covenant thing going on with God. She made a covenant with God, when she was crowned, to serve as queen until she died. She takes it awfully seriously. There'll be no abdication. In the meantime, with her 85th birthday just gone, she seems as fit as a fiddle.

Paul Holmes has a weekend off from his show on Newstalk ZB but returns at 9am next Saturday.