Imagine going to the recording of a TV show, something like, say, The X-Factor: The Battle of the Stars, and who should turn out to be performing as a “star” but the bete noir of your family, a man universally known as, The Cad, and who is persona non grata in every Royal Palace from Hollyrood to Vladivostok.

“Tell me about it,” Zara Phillips might well say. For it was she, together with boyfriend Mike Tindall, who attended that very show only to find Cap’n James Hewitt, the former lover and heartbreaker of her late aunt, Princess Diana, who got up and sang, Addicted To Love, much to Zara’s acute embarrassment.

Worse was to come. As she and Tindall stood in the guest bar after the show, Hewitt cheekily approached and started to talk to the rugger man. Said an eye-witness, “Poor Zara looked like she was going to die on the spot. Hewitt has no shame and everyone could see she was willing him to bugger off. She turned her back on him. After a couple of minutes, he eventually got the message and slunk off.”

As we always say here at Royal Anecdotes, if you go to low entertainment dives, you’ll rub shoulders with the low life.

Stick to horses, Zara.