A YEAR ago Toby Young and Lloyd Evans brought their Who’s the Daddy? to the King’s Head and proceeded to have some mildly tasteless, essentially harmless but often genuine fun at the expense of David Blunkett, Boris Johnson and that literary seraglio The Spectator. Now it’s the Royal Family’s turn to be subjected to what I’d call their satiric swordsmanship, if there really was anything Swiftian or sharp in their new farce.

Once again, this is mildly tasteless, essentially harmless; sadly, it is not as much fun.

The show is based on an idea as gloriously preposterous as, say, Estelle Morris manipulating her way to 10 Downing Street or, even madder, John Prescott aspiring to be a serious Deputy Prime Minister.

The Queen is dead. Long live the King — but what King? If he has his infinitely devious way, that Machiavelli of Balmoral, that Iago of Sandringham, that Richard III of Buck House: Prince Harry.

So how does Richard Keith’s Harry go about it? By persuading an Australian girlfriend to disguise herself as the ghost of Diana, Princess of Wales, appear to a still-grieving William, and tell him that Camilla is being unfaithful to Charles with the Duke of Edinburgh. Then by getting Wills to witness his grandpa’s supposed seduction of Camilla. Then by convincing Charles that William is crazy and must be sent to an asylum. Then by disguising himself as that weird druidical beardie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and telling Charles he was never properly married and so must abdicate in favour of his only sane son, namely Harry.

Whether I have all this right, and I’m not sure I do, it is of course very silly. The question is: is it silly-hilarious or just silly-silly? I did laugh at Sara Crowe’s cheerfully horsey Camilla, but, overall, less often than I did at Who’s the Daddy?.

Maybe that was because the farcical confrontations don’t take off, maybe because the mockery of our poor Royal Family is too obvious.

Andrew C. Wadsworth’s Charles is a doggedly earnest Candide who bangs on about things organic, talks to his tomatoes and, when rehearsing for his abortive Coronation, has a cabbage as an orb and a leek as a sceptre. William Hoyland’s Philip is a politically incorrect curmudgeon who tells the African dictators at the Queen’s funeral to go home and eat members of their opposition parties.

He’s also a priapic old chap, especially when surreptitiously fed Viagra by Harry and his co-plotter, who is, believe it or not, James Hewitt. And Hewitt is — but I’d better not give away Young and Evans’s final piece of lèse-majesté. They don’t need me spoiling what little giggles they have to offer.

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