IT must be love - for what else could you call the £150,000 a year that it was revealed this week that the Prince of Wales is spending on ensuring that the manner in which his "friend," Camilla Parker Bowles, lives is not affected by her lack of an official royal position.?

So it has been that Camilla has clocked up expenses of £20,000 on her recent tour of New York, flying there and back by Concorde, chinking glasses with the royal-groupie nobs of New England and whizzing about in hired helicopters and limousines.

And that's not all - Charles, we are told, has forked out £45,000 for other holidays and more besides for his ladyfriend's domestic staff, hunting horses, jewels and concert-going.

All of which should not concern us one jot - his amusing the love of his life being, of course, his own business.

But since Prince Charles has hardly had a proper job, apart from waiting for his function as heir to the throne to fulfil itself, and since the business of his twiddling his thumbs while awaiting that eventuality has, despite all the pretence of his maintaining a financial independence, long been subsidised by those who do a proper job and pay taxes, it follows that Joe Public is indirectly paying for Camilla's gadding about as a quasi-royal.

Whether Joe Public is happy with this situation is, of course, a moot point.

But should not Charles have asked first - or would that have risked the question of whether the public wants his horsey playmate as his feather-bedded consort to begin with?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.