RICHARD ORD: Hard-up royals heir-brush their way to another PR calamity

The mother of royal PR disasters? Photo by Prince of Wales/Kensington Palace/PA Wire

Those of you still buying the newspaper (‘hi mam’) will notice that I have updated the photograph of myself at the top of the page.

And yes, I have to admit, much like Kate Middleton’s much-maligned Photoshop efforts, it has been manipulated to portray me in the best light. To add an air of gravitas, I spent hours drawing in wrinkles across my artificially aged face. And I’m sure you noticed the exaggerated bags under my eyes. I put them there to suggest I have been burning the midnight oil to craft this article.

The big nose was my son’s idea. ‘You can always trust a man with an enormous hooter,’ he said. Done deal, I copy and pasted Richard Nixon’s conk.

The rest of the photograph is pretty much me, though I’m thinking of painting in different eyewear week by week to attract sponsorship (Monocles R Us have already expressed an interest).

Kate brushes up on her airbrushing technique at an art class...

All in all, like Kate’s family portrait, I think of it as a work of art. If it were a painting I’d call it ‘grinning idiot.’ I’ll sign a copy for you if you want. Just email me your address.

Kate’s Mother’s Day howler with her family portrait, however, makes you realise just how hard up the royal family is these days. I mean, there was a time when the royal household had a whole PR team organising photoshoots and press releases.

Turns out the royals are doing their own snaps! What’s more, they’re probably using rubbish mobile phones, which is no doubt why Kate had to touch up the photos herself.

As she revealed in a tweet: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing.”

Conspiracy theories abound, but in reality it’s a lot of fuss about nothing. Where is the harm in, like I did, lightening up dark areas of a personal photograph, tweaking small hand imperfections and airbrushing out the odd lizard tongue or two? It’s only natural.

I just fear this new slimmed down royal family is being asked to do too much. Getting royals to take and edit their own photographs is one thing, but, in Kate’s case, to make her do it so soon after having her abdominals removed is heartbreaking.

And to show how heartbreaking it is, I’ll Photoshop a teardrop running down my face next week.