Lockdown is doing wonders for the royal family. Even Fergie gets a look-in
© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Duchess of York/PA In forthcoming journals of this plague year, I hope whoever gets to write the canonical version will make a particular note of 15 April. This was the day the Duchess of York, ex-wife of Prince Andrew and ex-host to the late Jeffrey Epstein, the child sex offender, used the crisis to relaunch herself as the lockdown kiddies' choice.
Introducing Storytime with Fergie and Friends, the Duchess, surrounded by soft toys, said children needed "a little bit of magic". She was, she confided, in the Windsor home she shares with a host of novelty teapots and also Prince Andrew (whose testimony is still sought by a number of Epstein's victims), in her "favourite place ever… with children".
Her horrendous reading of Hairy Maclary From Donaldson's Dairy, featuring one shriek so unhallowed that a doggie soft toy seemed, hurling itself out of shot, to prefer extinction, had already given way, by day two, to a performance of one of her own titles, Budgie Goes to Sea, a rudimentary work, for the uninitiated, about a duchessomorphised helicopter.
"There's four books in the series," the duchess said, shoving the cover at tots whose finances may be more straitened after the recession than she imagines. "And" – anticipating the question preschoolers invariably ask about a new book – "guess who the author is? Mmm, I wonder, it could be me."
It could. And whatever the deficiencies of her performance – there may be parents At This Time who will seize the chance to reduce tiny children to mute terror – the duchess's renewed bid for recognition suggests, regardless of the prospects for Budgie's regeneration, that there has never been a better time to be a British royal.
Pre-Covid-19, following Andrew's Newsnight interview and their respective Epstein associations – the duchess has apologised for taking a loan from the paedophile – the York exes appeared fairly terminally beyond, if not rehabilitation, definitely the second panto wedding they'd hoped for. Now there is talk of reviving it. Contagion has, as well as reducing to a trickle the previously relentless Epstein updates, generated a surge of public deference so undiscriminating that the Yorks can reasonably hope to benefit. On Instagram, Andrew puts his head above the Windsor parapet as if he has done nothing, these past decades, except pack treats for carers, next to his never-estranged helpmeet. "The York Family are a wonderful and steadfast unit and through this crisis, are continuously helping others," oozes an aide.
© Photograph: Duchess of York/PA 'A little bit of magic' with the Duchess of York on her YouTube channel. Nobody seems now to be asking who was squeezing Prince Charles's toothpaste when he had Covid-19
As unpromising as this scheme might look, the family can surely take heart from the recent transformation of the prime minister from an inept and blubbery philanderer into something more closely resembling the glorious sun itself. But the sudden tolerance for rhapsodies about Boris Johnson's nation-binding, lie-obliterating invincibility, even from writers whose analysis does not usually recall Unity Mitford's, appears to be just one aspect of a widespread longing for comfort from on high, or wherever a significant royal is currently embedded, along with any necessary suspension of critical faculties.
If it was likely and welcome that the Queen, as a revered survivor of earlier crises, would be a calming national presence in this one, the Prince of Wales possibly had less reason to hope, like his dependent son and daughter-in-law, that their contributions – from spiritual input to book lists to a throwback photograph of Prince Charles as Macbeth – would be equally gratefully received. It's not long since Charles was subjected to ritual mockery about his transport needs (including a £20,000 journey from London to Port Talbot) and other disrespectful questions about his defence of a paedophile bishop. Sagewise, his alternative wisdom was not doing much better. But now a man who always wanted to be a symbol actually is a symbol.
"My entire life has been so far motivated by a desire to heal," Charles said in 2002. "To heal the divisions between intuitive and rational thought, between mind and body and soul, so that the temple of our humanity can once again be lit by a sacred flame." And it appears the cynics were wrong: he can indeed light humanity's temple and, what's more, light it remotely, from Birkhall. Certainly, nobody seems now to be asking who's living in the prince's other seven or so homes. Or who was squeezing his toothpaste when he had Covid-19. Or where his already considerable contagion travel savings are going. In the current climate, it could sound all too much like siding with the virus.
The Cambridges, meanwhile, are earning their share of the Queen's sovereign grant – and, incidentally, triumphing over the Sussexes, whose departure could scarcely have been worse timed – by way of encouragement and hints from their laptops in Anmer Hall and various Instagram offerings. The reminder #StayHomeSaveLives appeared next to some Easter daffodils at Kensington Palace, presumably empty at the time. Instead, the couple are self-isolating and home-schooling in Norfolk, amid all the delightful chaos, they like to emphasise, of any other young family sitting out the terror in a minimally staffed 10-bedroom mansion. They've been through "ups and downs", they assured the BBC, "like a lot of families". And like Charles, they seem so far to have been spared the kind of questions endured both by celebrity isolators declaring similar fellowship from country estates and by politicians unwilling to submit to exemplary pay cuts.
Throughout the Blitz, obliquely referred to in the Queen's broadcast, her parents stayed in the capital, to demonstrate solidarity. It says much about the popularity of her successors – if not the scale of public anxiety – that their more relaxing choices have not led to any obvious loss of allegiance. On the contrary: royal faces loom everywhere, with what feels like wartime frequency. "Why don't we conduct more business from home?" William urges, from his sitting room. "I do hope post this that there's a new way of working." And so, we can safely say, does Aunt Fergie.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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