Mrs Elizabeth Windsor, housewife and Queen is chartering a luxury ship to enjoy a well-deserved break from her usual hectic round of opening things, closing things and enquiring of grateful locals: "What do you do/ have you come far?"

Mrs Windsor, who apparently inherited the vital constitutional role she now carries out, will spend a week cruising sedately around the Isles, ready at a moment’s notice to make landfall should anything need opened or indeed, closed. To ensure privacy, Mrs Windsor has spent 125,000 of your earth pounds to ensure exclusive use of the vessel, The Hebridean Princess.

But the rest of us are being afforded the opportunity to ensure Her Madgeness has a safe trip by chipping in to provide a Royal Naval destroyer that will shadow the Queen’s ship. While it is not known how much it costs to run a fully crewed ship of the line while it putters along at half-speed around the islands you can bet your arse it costs a bit more than 125K a week.

Quite properly, while the Queen can freely charter a ship (it’s her money after all) we, the providers of the maritime security, do not appear to have been given a choice.

Apparently Prince Big Ears and that Rod Hull lookalike wife of his will be joining the ship later, but something tells me they won’t be availing themselves of the many and reasonably priced public transport links that connect up the Western Isles.