Please, spare us these royal bores on tour!

WHAT news from the East? Oh dear. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are still trundling around the Orient and elsewhere, deep in the royal tour that is even more boring than their Canadian royal tour, which is, as Bananarama once pointed out, really saying something.

We have had the Bollywood nights, the feeding the baby elephants, the playing with the children and the assorted sports photo opportunities. i’d like to be nice, but to be honest, the Queen has some corgis who are more charismatic than this pair. William looks like Uncle Awkward on school sports day and, despite his lifetime of polish and royal training, he still gives the impression that he would much rather be somewhere else.

in india he managed to shoehorn in a little speech about wildlife conservation — his pet cause — in a country where a quarter of the population live below the poverty threshold. We can forgive them, perhaps, for not caring about the ivory trade. Meanwhile, Kate has capered about with her hair in a middle-aged bun at one end and barmaid shoes at the other.

she has worn a variety of ghastly dresses, although not all of them were handmade by starving children in sweat shops, so well done for that.

We only nearly saw her knickers just that one time, so again, excellent work all round. During engagements, the Duchess was either screaming with laughter or looking utterly terrified. is she entirely all right, i wonder?

Crunch time — but not munch time — came in Mumbai, when the future king was offered the chance to make a dosa pancake when meeting young entrepreneurs.

he nibbled an edge of the pancake like a nervous rabbit, while she refused to taste it at all. shriek, a carb! no way!

Really, the pair of them are going to have to do a lot better than this.