To the royals we’re a crowd of nincompoops

And so it’s all about planning that party, icing that cake, planning some saucy bedroom tricks for that wedding night, and asking whether the papers will run out of italic ink for the endless pointless emphasis of that “that”.

And I have been so immersed in it all that I have seen no newspapers or television at all. I swear, a huge tsunami could have rolled over Japan and done billions of pounds of damage, and I wouldn’t even know.

A massive housing estate could have got planning permission to be built at East Coker, scene (and indeed name) of one of T. S. Eliot’s most memorable poems, and it would have passed me by. But obviously that could not have happened. Because if they were going to build on a T. S. Eliot poem then with all that “brownfield” legislation they would have to have built on The Waste Land instead. Although it would have depended on how favourably the local council chose to look upon The Planning Application of J. Alfred Prufrock (“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky, Like a patient etherised upon a trolley in a corridor because there were no tables . . .”).

So totally “in character” have I been this week that the world’s highest-paid television actor could have gone on a massive worldwide multimedia coke-and-hooker binge and I wouldn’t have a clue. Don’t know why that springs to mind. Possibly because I’m only in this television malarkey myself for the booze and hookers. Some way to go, though. At the moment the best I can hope for is weak tea and Penguin biscuits. For it is a lower rent production than Two and a Half Men, is Giles and Sue’s Royal Wedding. But only just.

• Filming began on Monday when I went to meet the legendary royal correspondent James Whitaker at Windsor Castle. Sorry, at The Windsor Castle. We couldn’t film at that Windsor Castle because although the Queen was bang up for it, the price of a standard return to Windsor and Eton Central on the train was £12, and what with Chris the camera, James the sound, Matthew the director and Liza who sorts stuff out, they could not afford for both Sue and me to go. Unless one of us walked. So we nixed it and decided to film in a pub with the same name.

As usual, though, Sue’s wig took longer to put on than had been predicted and she didn’t make it. So in the pub it’s just me and Whitaker, nursing pints that the landlord says we mustn’t drink because his licence doesn’t start till noon. Whitaker says he doesn’t rate that marriage’s chances because Kate, sorry Catherine, is too common. I tell him to wait till he gets a load of Perkins. And that’s a wrap.

• On Tuesday, we pose for the royal portrait for a man whose first name is Cambridge. Sue tries to look as if she loves me, but I look miserable because I have just lost my phone. Such are the pitfalls of royal portraiture.

• Arriving at work on Wednesday I turn to gawp at a huge old Bentley with a Union Jack on the bonnet, and wait to see which famous toff gets out. But none does. It’s for me. My job today is to be driven around in it looking princely. Which I do. And, bizarrely, people stop and stare into the car wherever we go, waving, cheering, taking photos on their phones, offering endless thumbs up and even saluting. To the Royal Family we must look like a population of imbeciles.

Towards lunchtime a tattooed bicycle courier thumps the roof as he passes and cries “Royal ******!” I lean out of the window and shout back: “**** off, Robespierre!”

• Thursday is an early call at Gieves & Hawkes in Savile Row to get my wedding outfit. They have made any number of royal outfits these past 200 years and a fellow called Peter has all the history at his fingertips. But our researcher, Eleanor, says the main thing is that when he shows me the wedding outfit of a mid-19th century Duke of York I am to ask if this was the original Grand Old Duke of York. Which it apparently was. Then I am to repeat it several times, in disbelief, from different angles, because the Grand Old Duke of York is the only historical personage that people who watch telly have ever heard of.

In the event, though, the best outfit by far is a gold-brocaded military frock-length thing that Peter tells me they made for Michael Jackson.

“What, the Prince of Pop?” I ask, truly disbelieving.

“The very fellow,” says Peter.

And he says I may try it on. I say I do not think that a coat made for that skinny little monkey of a man will do very well on my broad, cricketing shoulders. But it fits me perfectly. And thus I can reveal that the late Mr Jackson was blessed with proportions identical to your bloated scribe.

I ask if I may wear it for my own royal wedding at the end of next week, but the director says, no, I must wear an RAF uniform. I put it on, but it is profoundly dull. It makes me look like a traffic warden. This is confirmed later when, during our horse-drawn carriage procession down The Mall, the crowds cheering for Sue in her lovely wedding dress suddenly catch sight of me and run for the parking meters.

Lunching at the Eat outlet in Savile Row after the fitting (one sandwich between three, onscreen “talent” gets to lick the box), Eleanor confides that in the visitors’ book she saw the name of Michael Middleton, Kate’s father, entered for the previous day.

I say to her that this is, in the context, a massive scoop, for it reveals what the real father of the real bride will almost certainly be wearing on his way down the aisle on April 29. I ask if she is sure it is okay for me to break it in The Times rather than in the show.

She says she could not care less what I do with it. She says I can go and boil my head in it if it makes me feel any better. And at that moment I realise that poor Eleanor is inconsolable because, in all the excitement, I totally forgot to mention The Grand Old Boring Duke of York.

“Even Charlie Sheen could have managed that,” says Eleanor. And she is probably right.