Unless you are lucky enough to be in hibernation, it's been hard to escape the saga of Harry and Meghan and "The Interview" that has developed into a rather uncomfortable public soap opera.
It's a reminder of how quickly times change these days. Just three years ago we were watching the happy couple tying the knot amid pomp and pageantry at Windsor Castle. Not being a fan of flashy weddings, I have no idea why I watched it.
It was supposedly a fairy tale romance and the proceedings at the wedding created an appropriate Disney-like ambience. We were treated to horses, hats, castles, queens, princes, princesses, lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses, page boys and even Elton John. What more could you ask for?
Even the weather behaved which in Britain is always a bonus.
The one lasting image from that day is of lots of posh ladies wearing silly hats as they rolled up in all their bejewelled splendour outside St George's Chapel. The milliners in London had definitely been working overtime. There hadn't been such a fanciful display of female headgear since My Fair Lady. Some of the hats adopted such strange angles it looked like they had crash landed on their respective aristocratic hairdos.
The only other thing I recall from the wedding was a brief flurry of excitement when Oprah Winfrey couldn't find her seat. There was also an offbeat moment when one of the CNN crew suddenly announced "Breaking news! I've just seen Victoria Beckham smile".
Own goal
As a lad in the 1960s I remember playing a football match against a Windsor school team in a park adjacent to the castle. Despite the fancy backdrop I had a wretched game, possibly because I spent too much time looking at the touchline to see if the Queen had come out to watch while taking her corgis for a walk. There was a brief flurry of excitement as a woman strode from the direction of the castle, but she turned out to be the mum of one of our opponents.
Alas, there were to be no royal spectators and the game was watched by the proverbial three men and a dog (plus the mum). And the hound in question was definitely not a corgi.
Saved by a whisker
Feel-good stories are all too rare these days so it was refreshing to read of the four kittens rescued from a sinking trawler last week by the Thai Navy.
The navy had already rescued the eight-man crew from the stricken vessel the previous day off Koh Adang, near the Malaysian border. When they returned to check on the trawler they heard the unmistakable sound of meowing and spotted four terrified ginger kittens huddled together perched precariously on the sinking vessel.
Hero of the hour was Petty Officer Wichit Pukdeelon, 23, who dived in and swam to the vessel, and rescued the kittens one by one, the moggies clinging to his shoulder as he swam back.
The rescue made headlines around the world, which suggests Thailand is not the only country in desperate need of feel-good stories.
Dog paddle
Readers may recall an animal rescue two years ago involving a dog which was discovered paddling away an amazing 220km offshore in the Gulf of Thailand. It was spotted by oil rig workers and hauled to safety. It wasn't clear why the dog was so far out to sea, but it was assumed it fell off a fishing trawler.
The exhausted dog was a sorry sight when he was hauled out of the sea shivering, but back on dry land in Songkhla the happy hound looked handsome enough for Crufts dog show.
Catnap
A feline made news in England last week when it took a snooze on the roof of a passenger train, resulting in a near three-hour delay. The packed 9pm express from Euston in London to Manchester was about to depart when the tabby cat was spotted having a quiet snooze on the roof of the train.
Staff tried to entice the cat down, but the stubborn moggy wouldn't budge. There was also concern that the cat was perilously close to high voltage cables and was in real danger of becoming a toasted cat.
Passengers were not impressed by announcements that the delay was caused by a sleeping cat and demanded to be moved to a replacement train, eventually heading for Manchester several hours after their planned departure.
When the tabby was finally enticed down it strolled off into the night with not a care in the world. A relieved station manager remarked, "Thankfully we avoided a cat-astrophe."
Tanner talk
Following last week's item on the origins of the term "quid" as slang for a British pound, my thanks to a reader who informs me it comes from the Latin "quid pro quo" meaning something in exchange for something else.
As a child I was more likely to be handling a "tanner" (sixpence) than a quid. Apparently "tanner" came from the Romany Gypsy term "tawno" meaning "a small thing". It was the favourite coin for parents to give youngsters just to shut them up. It later became the coin of choice to put in the annual Christmas pudding, supposedly bringing luck unless of course you accidentally swallowed it.
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