“WHY, oh why, did I wear that one?” asks Princess Beatrice to the Mail’s Richard Kay.

Bea is talking of that bikini, the one she was photographed wearing in the Caribbean.

But she should not be too hard on herself for her choice of garment.

It was the Mail’s Allison Pearson - “Can someone please have a kindly word with her before it all goes pear-shaped?” – and Amanda Platell – “get her body under control” – who told us that it was Bea’s tummy, thighs and arse that were the wrong choice. Rest assured, Bea, the bikini was just dandy.

But young gels will take things to heart and Beatrice has been driven made enough to seek gainful employment.

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CARLA Bruni, wife to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, La Belle France’s answer to Lempit Opik and his Cheeky Girl, is in conversation with Paris Match magazine.

The Mail listens in and hears Carla mention her trip to Britain.

Says she: “It was like arriving on another planet. Never in my life did I think I would meet the Queen of England.”

And what of that meeting in the Windsors’ rarefied air? She recalls how at Windsor Castle, Her Majesty showed Carla around and opened a door with a cheery: “Here’s your bathroom.”

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PRINCE Harry’s Ronald McDonald Army has done for the enemy, and rightly their eponymous leader is hailed a hero and given a medal.

The Mail looks on as Harry is met by his aunt the Princess Royal. Having faced down al-Qaeda, Harry stands firm as aunty approaches brandishing a medal on a pin.

Anne is seen to chat with her nephew for around 30 seconds. Having commended Harry on not giving into fashion and sticking with one signature look, Princess Anne is seen to smile .

What does she know?

The Mail says that the Prince’s tour to Afghanistan was made possible only by an “unprecedented voluntary media blackout and a level of secrecy which left even some of the country’s most senior generals totally unaware that he was there”.

Those of you have seen Prince Edward’s career to date will take issue with the Mail’s use of the word “unprecedented”.

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THE story so far: Princess Beatrice has been pictured on the beach in a bikini.

The Mail’s Allison Pearson says: “I fear Bea is in danger of combining her mother’s to-curling excesses with her dad’s physique.”

Surely she means her dad’s toe-curling excesses with her mother’s physique? But we should not interrupt, Pearson is delivering her piece in the spirit of united womanhood.

She issues an appeal for help: “Can someone please have a kindly word with her before it all goes pear-shaped?”

So here’s Amanda Platell, also writing in the Mail. In “Bea, beach bodies and the thorny problem of the Mummy gene” advises Beatrice to get some better genes.

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MORE efforts to show the world how common the Royal Family are.

Zara Phillips, daughter of a stable lad, tells GQ Sport magazine of life with rugby player Mike Tindall.

Michael, sorry, Mike, lives with Zara in a starter home, a “former gardener’s cottage” (Express), in the grounds of a rich person’s house, namely one Princess Anne.

“Everyone’s like ‘Wow, two World Cup winners in one house’ and that is quite funny I suppose.” And refreshingly normal.

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WITH no toes visible, readers are left to guess what is going on beneath the waves as Princess Beatrice and boyfriend Dave Clarke take the waters in St Bart’s.

The Express recalls those heady days when Bea’s mum, Sarah Ferguson, was pictured having moisture sucked from her toes by financial advisor John Byran in the south of France.

Now Bea, dressed in her “Bea-kini” (sun) is striding purposefully in “Mummy’s twosteps (Mail).

While the Mail and Express get an atlas, Bea is “wiggling those little piggies” on the sand.

It’s all good exercise, of course. And part of Bea’s gap year, in which to date she has sampled Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Spain, America, Egypt, Abu Dhabi and Switzerland.

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PRINCE William is landing a helicopter in girlfriend Kate Middleton’s garden.

He was only supposed to hover at 15ft and so dry the Middletons’ washing, and there is understandable “outrage” that he should have found cause to land.

The Express finds an “aviation analyst” to say: “This is an absolute waste of training hours on the Chinook helicopter that the military are hard-press to afford.”

The Sun puts the cost of the landing at £30,000, and Anorak suggests that next time Wills picks up Kate he lowers a knotted rope so cutting down on the expense.

Says one voice in the Sun: “If the Middletons had been tooled up with AK47s to resist the landing, it might have had training value.”

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AFTER yesterday’s expose on squalid living conditions at the Brize Norton military base, the sun presses its pug nose to the gates of Gatcombe Park.

And who lives there? Why, none other than Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence, husband to Princess Anne, son-in-law to Her Majesty the Queen and chief executive of Defence Estates.

The point seems to be that while “Our Boys” live in rat-infested slums, the boss resides in splendour.

It is a point well made. But who is to say that Laurence does not earn his money and deserve his ermine toilet paper and luxurious Matey bubble baths?

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THE Princess Diana inquest cost us £13million, says the Star (12.5m echoes the Express) - or the price of twenty seven dresses, three winter getaways to the Mediterranean, two engagement rings and a new hair-do…

CALLING Prince Edward.

Calling Prince Edward.

Last call for Prince Edward.

Where the f*** is Prince Edward?

To the studio of artist Richard Stone, who has spent the past nine years capturing the marriage of Prince Eddie and Sophie in oil, paint and crayon.

“I didn’t ever discuss with Prince Edward show long it was going to take, but I never envisaged it would take me this long ,” says Stone in the Mail.

In that period three of the wedding party have shuffled off the canvas – Sophie’s mother, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.

Should Stone take much longer his work will get ever more simple. By the time Stone gets to Eddie, the prince will be resemble no more than a two-minute boiled egg in a check tank top, a rendition of children’s favourite Bod.

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“HARRY HERO GETS MRSA,” says the Sun’s front page, so adding some perspective to the War on Terror and meaning to Royal Marine Ben McBean.

Mr McBean is Prince Harry’s hero because Harry says he is a hero. McBean lost an arm and a leg in Afghanistan when a Taliban mine exploded.

McBean was taken to Selly Oak NHS hospital, where he was given the best treatment and a dose of MRSA, as is alleged.

To the Sun this is “SICKENING”. The NHS denies Mr McBean contracted MRSA in their care, and deep in the article the paper notes that he is in possession of ‘colonised’ MRSA and his wounds are not infected.

But who needs facts when the story fits in neatly with the Sun’s Help For Heroes campaign to salute our servicemen.

We need to honour and reward our armed forces. But do we do enough?

The pictures are of Canada saluting its War On Terror dead on a typically busy Canadian road and of Britain saluting its fallen in a traffic jam.
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PRINCE Harry wears “royal blue” boxer shorts.

Suitably reassured, we look to the Sun for other views on Pete Phillip’s stag do.

Before we do, Amii shows Sun readers her royal pink knickers and says: “They could have chosen to party in the Caribbean or a West End club, but they plumped for a pub on the Isle of White. Good on them – it proves they are just like the rest of us.”

But are you wearing royal blue boxers? And if you are, should you be?

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PRINCESS Anne, equine daughter to Queen Elizabeth, is said to be odds with her horse-enthusiast ex-husband, Mark Phillips (what did he ever see in her?)

The New York Post looks at a story in The New York Times that says that three riders hoping to qualify for the US Olympic equestrian team have died during competitions in the US. Phillips is the team’s coach.

Know that nine more riders worldwide have died over the past year and half. No, not horses, the riders.

The Post says deaths are up “because the sport has become more popular and the jumping courses, some designed by Phillips himself, have become more challenging”.

“Phillips is about to be crucified as the halfwit menace,” says one British journalist.

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PRINCESS Diana is dead. That’s just one of the things the latest inquest into her death has established.

Now Mohammed Al Fayed speaks out. Again.

“Enough is enough,” he says.

It may even be too much for Paul Burrell, the Rock-like limpid the Mail says will face a police inquiry over allegations he committed perjury during the inquest.

The paper says: “If found guilty, he could face ten years in jail.”

But as Burrell would no doubt put it, what has the last decade without Diana been if not a life sentence?

IT’S 3873 AD (After Diana) and the papers carry news of the self-styled Princess of Hearts.

The Inquest into her death has closed. The ruling is that Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed were unlawfully killed due to the “gross negligence” of driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi. Diana was killed because she did not use her seatbelt.

The snappers are pictured on the Times’ cover page. They and Paul are the “usual suspects”.

The Telegraph leads with “Let that be the end, say Princes”. Readers learn that William and Harry “hope unlawful killing verdict will bring to a close speculation over mother’s death”.

“Now let her rest in peace,” says the Scotsman on its cover.

So that’s it, then. Goodbye Diana. You came. Your shook hands. You were blonde. You went on holiday. You were a prototype David Beckham.

But the Metro newspaper, one of London’s top hundred free daily newspapers, wonders: “Diana: The final verdict. Or is it?” There is the “threat of a legal challenge”.

Is there? Even the Express leads with “DIANA WAS KILLED UNLAWFULLY”, accepting that she was not murdered by a combination of Prince Philip, Chicago neo-Nazis and a flash photography.

‘It Was Murder’  

A spokesman for Dodi Fayed’s father, Mohamed Al Fayed says: “We’re looking at all possibilities.” No, not that Dodi and Diana were killed by the Queen Mother and Mr Grassy Knoll. Well, not only that. Fayed in said to be investigating the possibility of pursuing a private prosecution against the paparazzi in the French courts.

The Times hears Mr Fayed’s statement: “The most important thing is that it’s murder.” The verdict was “unlawful killing”. But that’s not important. What is important is: “It has been a long fight to uncover the truth. I am not the only person who says they were murdered.”

Indeed not. There’s Keith Allen, father to one-hit wonder Lily Allen, who the Scotsman says has made a documentary about the inquest into the deaths of Diana and hopes it’s a hit at Cannes. He says: “To this day I absolutely believe that this wasn’t an accident. I just know.”

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SAYS Justice Scott Baker of Princess Diana’s “rock” Paul Burrell: “It was blindingly obvious, wasn’t it, that the evidence that he gave in this court was not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

“He had written books, one was into its second edition, and in a number of ways he had cashed in on his selfserved position as having been Diana’s rock. All in all, you may think Burrell’s behaviour has been pretty shabby.

“You may think that a thread running through his evidence was the impression that he thought he was giving and a consideration of the impact whatever he said might have on any of his future enterprises.

“I advise you to proceed with caution especially when and if you are left with the impression that he only told you what he wanted you to hear.”

The Mirror nots that the coroner is heard reminding the jury that the 49-year-old has been described as “quite a porous rock”, given the number of the princess’s secrets he has leaked.
Says the Sun: “Former flunky Paul Burrell was yesterday branded a shabby, bitter, money-grabbing liar by the Diana inquest coroner.”

“What now for Paul Burrell – a US tour with Heather Mills?” asks the Scotsman.

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PRINCESS Diana is today wearing a blue dress, gold earrings and a sunny disposition.

In “DIANA – Coroner says it wasn’t murder”, conspiracy theorists learn that the coroner in the Diana inquest can find not one shred of evidence to support the theory that Our Lady of the Immaculate Handbag was murdered.

Of course, this is grist to the mill for conspiracy theorists who know that they and the pigeons in the shopping precinct are privy to the truth.

Says the Mail: “After 89 days, £7million and 250 witnesses, Diana coroner decides what we all knew…she WASN’T murdered (and even Fayed’s lawyer’s agree).”

Indeed, dear readers, the Mail is in on it too.

“Di Judge Lashes The Liars,” says the Mirror’s front-page headline. But no, these are not those liars, those high-up Nazis, those MI5 operatives, those Royals, but they who say Diana was assassinated in an elaborate plot involving a car, a playboy and a tunnel.

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NICOLAS Sarkozy is sharing the platform (heels) with Her Majesty, Prince Philip and Carla Bruni.

La Bruni is not with Phil but the Guardian’s front-page picture of her looking at the Queen’s consort, a smile playing across her lips, suggests she longs to be. While Philip smiles broadly, Carla’s eyes sparkle. Sarkozy is looking into the camera, a man unnerved.

The Telegraph’s snips Sarkozy away and features only Phil’s noble profile and Bruni’s gaze. “Britain is enchanted by Madame Sarkozy,” says the Express on its cover. And Madame Sarkozy is enchanted by a Briton.

On the Times’ cover, Bruni is with Her Majesty, who is talking and pointing something out. But Carla has only eyes for Liz, her head a whirl of what hold this woman has over Philip, and how it can be slackened.

As the paper’s headline says: “When the Queen met Madame le President”. It’s a Lloyd-George-knew-my-father moment.

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