The Windsors are another fine example from the sharp end of British satire

While many people will find the show disrespectful, it is healthy – and funny, believes Dr Mary Brown

Although I am not an avid TV viewer, it has been well worth staying up beyond my normal Wednesday night bed time to watch The Windsors, the spoof soap opera about that wellknown Royal family.

It is the only current comedy programme at which I have actually hurt myself laughing.

I may as well admit that I am a convinced Republican, although I love Charles and Camilla and would definitely invite them to be joint presidents of an independent Scotland – they could even retain Balmoral, although I suspect they wouldn’t want to hang on to such a hideous building.

The point about The Windsors is that to many people it will appear extremely disrespectful of royal- ty. For those who have not seen it, it portrays Prince William as an amiable idiot, his wife Katherine as an ex-gypsy who once killed a man in a ‘bare knuckle fight’ and is now desperate to be respectable, Harry as a sweet dimwit who has never learned to read or write, and Charles and Camilla as bumbling amateur criminals, keen to hang on to power.

Other members of ‘The Firm’ are even more outrageously parodied. I suspect that the older and more conservative viewers will switch off after five minutes of this.

However, I think they should persevere, for two reasons. First, it is the sign of a relatively healthy society that it can mock its institutions and public figures without fear – this has been the case since the