Who is the absolute worst former Princess Di hanger-on? I know who you’re going to say – and we will obviously get to him, and the dresses in his attic. But hold that thought, if only because of the sheer volume of Diana’s ex-“helpers” currently crawling from the woodwork to attack the Duchess of Sussex for her perceived missteps.

I say “to attack” – what I mean is “to offer candid advice as someone who’s been there”. And by “been there”, I mean worked for Princess Diana, then sold her out after her death. And, in one case, attempted to contact her in a seance on pay-per-view TV, hosted by Patrick Macnee, the former Avengers star.

By way of a quick recap, Meghan’s celebrity friends seem to have paid for a hugely expensive baby shower for her in New York last week. This has precipitated a mass wetting of pants by people whose reaction to the various crises besieging their nations is neither fight nor flight, but asking questions such as: “Why can’t she see the grave danger of being friends with Oprah?” and “Doesn’t she KNOW that tights are protocol?” Thank you for you being this invested, Texas! And Surrey, and stuff. Alas, it is always the cruellest irony that caring about the royal family in this particular fashion is literally the most vulgar activity there is.

Or is it? I don’t know about you, but I always like to take lectures in vulgarity from former members of Diana’s household, who have since farted out tell-all books with titles such as Shadows of a Princess. And even more recently, tell-nothing books like The Meghan Factor. In this spirit, let us welcome Patrick Jephson, a retired equerry but serving shitbag, who has taken to the Daily Mail to warn Meghan of where accepting freebies might lead. According to Patrick, there is always a hidden price attached for the free-riding royal.

“Favours must be returned,” he judges word-countily, “obligations quickly multiply, and pretty soon royal free-riders are handing over their most precious assets: credibility and dignity, if not, please God, their lives.” Wait, wait, wait, what? Did we just read … yes, I rather think we did. Please God this heavily pregnant woman doesn’t DIE “pretty soon” in a chain of events sparked by Amal Clooney giving her a moses basket.

While you digest the hysterical bad taste of Patrick’s candid friendship, do please also consider Jephson’s genuine affront that Meghan should have judged the “support network” of royal staff – of the type he once was – to be surplus to requirements when planning this private trip. As he stiffly points out, this staff “exists to protect her”.

Affecting words from the author of a book which claimed that a pink vibrator Diana brought back from Paris was “never used for its designed purpose”. “For reasons of her own,” sniffs Patrick of Meghan, “it seems that she has outsourced her support operations, including reputation management, to a group of her friends.”

Madness! It can be only minutes before Oprah or Serena Williams feels so treacherous and grasping that they decide to pen a tell-all book about Meghan called Shadows of a Duchess. I assume that you haven’t read Jephson’s first book, which contains lengthy passages of character assassination of his deceased former employer, but his self-reflections are fairly priceless. “If all this sounds rather overprincipled,” he muses of himself at one point, “then it probably was.” Yeah, if anything, he’s too much of a perfectionist. When Diana eventually bins him off, he “told nobody of my agonised thoughts except God”. And then the readers of Shadows of a Duchess, which itself was serialised like a bastard in various global outlets.

It is up to you whether you find Patrick more or less hilarious than Princess Diana’s former spiritual healer, Simone Simmons, whose psychic odyssey has taken her frequently to the newspapers. Simone gets perfectly furious if you call her a chancer, so let me simply say that, about 18 months ago, she told newspaper readers that Princess Di had been in touch to say she’d have voted for Brexit.

There hasn’t been any further detail since – we don’t know where Diana stood on the Malthouse compromise, for instance, or, indeed, whether the deceased Princess of Wales believes that Wednesday’s votes have in fact made no deal a shade more likely than it was at the start of the week. But Simone is a charlatan radicalised anew by Meghan’s mere presence in the royal family. “I give their marriage two-and-a-half to three years,” she pronounced in October. “I don’t want to see him badly hurt,” she claimed, “and Harry won’t know what’s hit him when it does happen.” Well, we’ve all read our fairytales. This is why you have to invite the 13th spiritual healer to the christening. Having said that, would the UK falling asleep for 100 years be the worst result at this point?

But for now, we can avoid him no longer. As far as offering candid advice and admonishment to Meghan goes, even a man such as Jephson is always going to be the Salieri to Paul Burrell’s Mozart. There is, quite simply, no one to touch Diana’s former butler – or her “rock”, as he prefers it. For many, Paul is a rock in the Gibraltar style: controversial, unappealing and perennially surrounded by gibbons.

Either way, he has, over the years and by increments, recast his relationship with Diana so entirely so that he now speaks of having “worked with” the Princess. They were basically joint CEOs. Following Diana’s death, you may remember, Paul felt that the only way he could “protect the princess’s world and keep her secrets safe” was to bung as many of her dresses and other portable items into the boot of his car, and transfer them to the attic of Chez Burrell.

Why do I always imagine it was her “roomier” dresses – maybe the maternity ones? I should say there is absolutely no evidence for the implication. Then again, once you stash a load of your former employer’s clothes in your attic, you do arguably have to run the gauntlet of people like me imagining what you wanted them for. Were they allowed to simply gather dust, untouched in the Burrell loft next to the Christmas decorations and every back issue of Silver Service Enthusiast? Or were they … taken out, from time to time?

We may never know. Just as we will never know the exact details of why the trial that arose from this misunderstanding was curtailed. All we have to go on is Burrell’s record of a conversation he had with the Queen shortly after Diana died, in which Her Majesty apparently breathed: “Be careful, Paul! There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge!” To which Paul replied: “Dude, you’re married to one of them.” I’m sorry – that’s a complete fabrication. But, in some ways, as credible as the next thing Her Maj was supposed to have said to him during this bilateral summit: “No one, Paul, has been as close to a member of my family as you have.”

This week, Paul was claiming, in the course of disparaging Meghan, that the Queen had said: “We are not celebrities, to be royal is something quite different.” Again, [citation needed]. According to Burrell, the baby shower “can only spell disaster”, “it all seems very odd to me” and Meghan is “handing every ammunition [sic] to shoot her down and she’s not helping herself”.

No one helps himself like Paul, of course, who currently seems to be notching up twice-weekly advice to Meghan via various media appearances. Hard to pick a favourite, but let’s play out with his ludicrous warning to Meghan just before Christmas that “Sandringham is Downton Abbey on speed”. Sure. Base speed, if anything. Up for three days straight and horribly jittery. Walking aimlessly round the corridors at all hours with the other tormented night creatures. Asking Prince Edward if he’s got any weed but saying no to the Valium because this one person you know knows someone else who had a heart attack by doing that and, yeah, basically the best thing is to just keep walking isn’t it and see it out naturally and … sorry, but no. Still, plenty more from Paul as and when we get it – feel free to stockpile your own downers accordingly.