A trusted 'grey suit' writes to Margrethe

Your Majesty,

I am attempting to keep you up-to-date with your son's mental meanderings and sexual proclivities as gleaned from the servants and other eyes and ears around the palace, but he is certainly a serial digressor! Small fires constantly being hosed is perhaps the most accurate way to put it. And putting out a fire with whiskey isn't really the way to go. To put it mildly, there are some concerns.

Firstly and most oddly, Frederik has plans to spearhead a revival of the Lasse Braun years, when Denmark was at the forefront of the liberation of pornography. This must arise one presumes from the 'talking dirty with his sailor mates' that Frederik has been repeating ad nauseum. Lasse Braun, you will recall, was featured on Arte recently with a couple of documentaries. The fact that he's a washed-up loser appeared to find no form with Fred, who was glued to the screen. Must be a further sympton of his decision about four years ago to snob himself down. His wife, being no stranger to sex industry advocates, was bored by the doco - "too hippy", she declared.

Fred was inspired by The Devil In Miss Jones of 1973, which Andrew Miles showed him on DVD in Bondi Junction, and wished to produce a revival with roles reversed and Frederik himself taking the lead. He seems to be rather anxious to scratch the acting bug again. Here's a synposis of the original film: Justine Jones, spinster, commits suicide, and the Devil offers her the opportunity to live her life over again as a sexually rapacious libertine. It appears from this posting on the internet that Frederik's plans have reached pornography historians: "Although rumors continue to fly about a more modern "re-imagining" of the original film's storyline, as of December 2003, nothing concrete has been announced by any major adult video studio". His wife's family's talking buttocks seem to be a keen inspiration to him. No word yet on whether the female lead will be played by man, or if union rules will demand the role be open to rather butch, waistless actresses as well. Frederik seems quite anxious himself to put on the d'Artingnan costume again.

Since those original plans for a fairly innocent movie, Fred's proclivities have become stranger and stranger. Take the servant with the bandaged knee. Her knee has been healed for quite some time, but continues to wear the bandage under orders. She, a plain, middle-aged working-class woman, is required to stand by the sidelines observing the royal couple constantly, even in the bedroom, I'm sorry to say. She seems to have been singled out for her uncanny ressemblence to a walrus crossed with a scotch nanny. I can only surmise that Fred is projecting is wounded, damaged unconscious onto this servant in some way. The woman also had an alarming ressemblence to old Nanny MacGillicudy back in her heyday working for you. Odd. A matter, you will agree, for further investigation.

Similar twists on banality are surfacing elsewhere. Take the holiday Down Under. What orgy of self-punishment is the Prince self-inflicting, one wonders, spending time with those freakishly freckled children his nieces and nephews? They resemble the freckled Devil twins in The Devil Wears Prada. His royal Highness was the point person for all the runs to the Hill Street Grocer. He carried all the shopping bags. He spent most of his days jumping on the trampoline with the kids or meeting up with his brother-in-law's loser friends from school. Back at Jane's he slept hanging upside down under the balconies whenever he wasn't in the humidor. Your majesty, it is quite simply, deeply disturbing. It's as if he would rather foresake his glorious destiny and instead live life as a regular, bogan Joe. I have asked Dr. Freudenborg to put some decent analysis up for a change. How can such a simple, childish fellow with such basic, elemental needs baffle the professionals so completely?

Yours truly,

Ove
Lord Chamberlain