With the Prince of Wales’s 60th birthday looming tomorrow, Friday, celebrations got off to an exuberant start last night with an evening of comedy at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London.

John Cleese, of Monty Python fame was the master of ceremonies for the evening together with former Fawlty Towers co-star Andrew Sachs, Manuel to his fans. The idea was to give Prince Charles a very special occasion in the presence of a host of comic superstars.

Meanwhile, over at the BBC, an excellent documentary cum interview with the Prince was broadcast last night. It was conducted by Robert Hardman of the Daily Mail and examined every aspect of Charles’s life and charity work. The range of subjects over which Charles presides with great aplomb and expertise must be mind-blowing to anyone who doesn’t keep up.

Tonight, a dinner, with an orchestral performance, will be given by the Queen in honour of her son and heir. Yesterday, she was heard to praise his public-spirited work for charity and even referred glancingly to his future role as King, which is not something she normally mentions in public.

In these depressive times, you would expect the famously frugal Monarch to cut costs even at such a banquet. And indeed the wines selected by the Queen to enhance the Balmoral salmon and venison dishes, are notable but not lavish.

Puligny Montrachet Les Olivier Leflaive, 2006 at £40 ($60) a bottle, will refresh the palette without exciting aficionados of fine wine. The red, Chateau Leoville-Barton St Julien, 1988, around £100 ($150), will be excellent after a few glasses of the white.

The dessert wine is a nice 1996 Sauternes, and a suitably expansive note to end on.

The absence of conductor Riccardo Muti owing, apparently, to a disagreement over the length of his proposed programme and perhaps his fee, will not dampen spirits at what should be a glittering event.

Now here’s an intriguing question for the weekend.

We received an email about Royal fertility tests for women intending to marry a senior Prince. I think it merits some careful consideration.

It’s known that this practice has traditionally been part of the process of the marriage ritual of heirs, or very near heirs, to the Throne. Diana had to undergo a medical examination and we know that it was successful.

What, though, if someone failed? These days the hurdles are much higher than even 20 years ago. It’s not just a Yes/No verdict that’s available. DNA testing can throw up a mass of probability data over a wide range of genetic diseases.

Where does the fail point lie: a one in ten chance, one in 100, one in a million? Most people would probably fail if the criteria were set too high.

Now here’s the rub. How would the Palace handle a situation where a young women was generally fertile, but who had a mild to medium chance of producing children with some genetic disability?

Obviously, they wouldn’t splash it all over the press. If some journalists discovered the truth, editors would be very wary of putting private medical information into the public domain. There might even be general agreement across the media not to publicize it at all.

And how would this play into the current situation of both the heir’s heir and the spare’s long-term girlfriends?

This is a hypothetical question, but one which will make life very difficult in the future for the Royal Family and pose a variety of ethical and practical questions in an age of maximum media exposure.

Not to be outdone by the Brown government’s refusal to foot the bill for essential Palace maintenance, the Queen has used her personal funds to purchase a new aircraft for her own use and that of her Family.

Although a more Monarchy-friendly administration is due to take power in a year or so, many of us had hoped the Queen would become more proactive in her own interests. This is now beginning to take shape.

It’s also been announced that a new gym is being built in Buckingham Palace for the 450 staff who work there.

It will be fitted out with top-of-the-range equipment and a personal trainer. The facility will be situated in the Royal Mews and funded by the Royal Lifestyle Committee with generous help from HM herself.

A Royal source commented, “Research into the issue was conducted by the Lifestyle Committee recently and they discovered that all the top FTSE 100 companies provided gyms for their employees.”

The source added, “The Queen prides herself on being a top-class employer and with more than 450 staff on her books needs to offer them the kind of perks they would find at other large companies. The Queen is probably the best proponent of a healthy lifestyle you can find and she is confident that the gym will be well used — although probably not by herself.”

It’s good to see the Monarchy fashioning itself as a modern employer and adopting the best business practices.

The fact that taxpayer funds are not being used highlights the distressed state of the public finances.

Laugh of the day was when twelve barrels of lager containing 2000 pints of the amber fluid were mistakenly delivered to the Queen yesterday. They should have gone to a pub called the Windsor Castle.

Royal staff were baffled when the delivery turned up at the real Windsor Castle. Staff could find no record of the order.

Blushes were saved when a Royal protection officer twigged the problem and phoned the drinking establishment five miles away in Maidenhead.

Pub boss Misko Coric confirmed he was waiting for the beer to lubricate fans about to watch the England v. Croatia soccer match on the big screen TV. The supplies were more than three hours late and he was getting jumpy the pub would run out of beer.

The Landlord said, “[In the past} we have taken delivery of Windsor Castle headed notepaper and letters for Prince Charles — but this is the first time they had anything destined for us.”

A Royal spokesman said, “It was very funny. But there’s no way the Queen sits down in the evening with a pint.”

Where were William and Harry when they were needed?