Why celebs understand royals: Peter Rhodes on a special bond, the death of a sex symbol and the Irish Question - again

A DAILY Telegraph reader says wouldn't it be a good idea, right at the advent of the electric-car age, to ensure there is one common battery for all models, making it easy for garages to whip one out and slip a new one in? It would, of course, make perfect sense. But given that the manufacturers, after 100 years of making cars, still can't agree where to put the indicators on the steering column or which side the fuel tank should go, I fear we can whistle for standardised batteries.

IF the gossips are to be believed, Prince Harry said he knew he should wed somebody from showbiz just days before he met Meghan Markle. Not because he wanted to meet someone glamorous but because celebrities and royals understand the pleasures and perils of fame and how to deal with them. This rang a bell. Ages ago, I interviewed Pamela Stephenson and she spoke very frankly about her and her husband Billy Connolly's friendship with the royals, notably Prince Charles. There was, she said, a common bond between the Windsors and the Connollys based simply on being famous and coping with the fans. And now she's Lady Connolly.

THE men who signed the 1921 Treaty creating the Irish Free State could never have imagined this week's Brexit furore. For a start, back in 1921 it was generally assumed that within a few months or years of the Treaty, large parts of Northern Ireland - and possibly all of it - would be ceded to the South. When that didn't happen, those who longed for a United Ireland took comfort in the belief that, in time, the higher birthrate among Catholics living in the North would create enough voters to force union with Dublin. That didn't happen either; today, about four in 10 Catholics in Ulster say they would opt to stay in the UK than live in a United Ireland. And somewhere in this tangle of broken dreams, changed minds and strange turnouts, Theresa May has been trying to persuade Ulsterfolk that having a somewhat closer relationship with Ireland is not the end of the world. She's on quite a journey. I bet we are all reminded of the old story about the car driver who stops to ask the way to Dublin and is told: "You don't want to be starting from here."

MORE on our changing language. "I had a mate who suicided." (Guardian website).

CHRISTINE Keeler died this week, aged 75. In the same week a major police operation against online sex stalkers revealed how it is virtually impossible for parents to protect today's children from the depravity of adults. Back in the 1960s, controlling your kids' access to the worldwide media was much simpler. I remember my father getting up early to hide the Daily Express, thus preventing us kids from reading a single juicy word about the Profumo Affair.