Any day now, possibly even in the next 24 hours, maybe even right this second, the Duchess of Cambridge will complete her transition from Almost-Human to Radiant Vision Of Complete Womanhood.

By no coincidence, it will occur at EXACTLY the same time the world loses its collective marbles. In almost perfect synchronicity, both Kate’s uterus and tabloid media will explode at the same time, raining blood, sweat and tears down on anyone within a five solar system radius.

PLACES PEOPLE, IT’S MAGIC TIME.

Kate Middleton, queen of the perfect blow-dry. Photo: Getty


Now, to the average person, there’s nothing new or interesting about Kate Middleton’s ability to make and bake a human cupcake. Women have been doing it for millennia, and despite a tweak here or there, the formula has remained pretty much the same. Mum and Dad have too much to drink, have a special hug and then three months later Mum can’t fit into her jeans/Roman tunic/animal skins anymore and spends every morning for the next six weeks spewing into whatever receptacle happens to be nearby. Five months after this, when her friends have marvelled that if she gets any bigger she will literally topple forward and roll for miles until her bloated body joins its new family of manatees in the sea, something that looks a little like this will happen in her belly.

And about 36 hours after that, she’ll have a little kitten of her own. The circle of life. Don’t let the sun go down on me, Elton.

Unfortunately for Kate, everyone with a blog and a passing interest in the monarchy went on immediate womb watch before the ink dried on the royal couple’s marriage certificate. The birth is their big payday, and they will bend it and stretch it and examine it from every possible angle and some you didn’t even think existed (much like what the vagina manages to do during childbirth, coincidentally).

But it’s important to maintain perspective. Unless Kate Middleton plans to give birth to a small unicorn made entirely out of glitter whose pointed horn carries the secret to humanity’s existence, all of this has been done before and all this will be done again.

So what breathlessly reported tidbits can we look forward to?

1. The decor of Kate’s birthing suite

I could probably Google to clarify the names of the two places I’ve read Kate may or may not give birth, but the truth is I don’t give a flying hootenanny. It doesn’t matter if your entire suite has been designed by Vera Wang and personally soundtracked by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. You’re there for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to get the small but vicious pit bull currently running into the walls of your uterus out of there and onto the colostrum oxy cocktail seeping out of your breasts. Who cares what colour the walls are painted?

The Daily Mail will no doubt have a 3000 word play by play of the thread count of Kate’s sheets, but that won’t matter. Kate’s manchester could be spun out of the whispers of fairies and then laundered in the tears of newborn lambs. It still won’t stop her from inadvertently crapping on them. Twice.

It’s birth. It happens.

2. The devotion of her lovah, The Prince

I’m anticipating drooling treatises to Prince William, as his every move is documented and revealed by ‘unnamed sources’. We can expect to read shivering descriptions of how he held Kate’s hand the whole time. How he was ‘so proud’, and described this moment as ‘the most important of his entire life’. ‘You can do this, Kate!’ he implored. ‘You are the strongest woman I know!’ Afterwards, when his baby had been handed to him, he wept tears of joy and bent down to whisper in the ear of Kate, the brave, beautiful mother of his child.

‘It was the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen,’ said a friend of the couple, who was inexplicably present at the birth despite there being clearly rules and regulations about this sort of thing. ‘William and Kate are more in love than ever - they’re even excitedly talking about when they’ll have another one!’

No ‘unnamed source’. Kate is currently passed out in a hormonal coma after having been awake for 40 hours and saying goodbye for the time being to her vaginal elasticity. She ain’t talking to no one, least of all you.

3. How Diana would have reacted

This one’s inevitable really. Diana was ‘the People’s Princess’. Her death was a tragedy. The tabloid media has made as much money from it as they did from her life. As a motherless child myself, I feel for the exploitation William and Harry have to endure.

Now, we’ll be able to read speculation about what kind of grandmother Diana would have made, and compare side by side photographs to identify the myriad of ways the baby takes EXACTLY after her. The Sun will publish an ‘exclusive’ from a 65 year old psychic who lives in Shropshire who can confidently state that the new child is Diana reincarnated - she knows, because she received the message in a dream along with the revelation that the world is going to end on September 17 sometime around half past five but possibly six.

What’s almost definitely true is that if Diana were still alive, she’d be telling Kate and William to take that child and run as fast as they can away from that weird cesspool of inbred class traditions. Run, and never come back.

But that was Diana. She was a rebel. Kate is a lovely woman in a succession of nice hats and sensibly priced clothing. Very different women, with very different ideas.

Still, it would actually be kind of awesome if Kate did give birth to a unicorn. That would shake up the Palace.

And baby makes three.