A living Diana doll

Loved by prince, public and paparazzi - Kate Middleton may be a royal dream come true, writes Róisín Ingle.

Loved by prince, public and paparazzi - Kate Middleton may be a royal dream come true, writes Róisín Ingle.

'Bloody people. I can't bear them." Prince Charles's attack on the media during a photo-shoot on a skiing holiday last April, a muttered whinge picked up by microphones, is nothing compared to the black thoughts Prince William has been harbouring about the media this week. On Tuesday, the day his girlfriend of four years, Kate Middleton, turned 25, she was besieged by dozens of paparazzi and no less than five television cameras as she left her flat in London for work. Not so much echoes of Diana-style stalking, but great trumpeting roars.

Middleton, who met Prince William five years ago at St Andrew's University in Scotland, is an accessories buyer for clothing chain Jigsaw. It was noted that on the day the photographers descended she was wearing a €60 dress from Top Shop. The dress, a monochromatic tunic, sold out of the high street chain's website within 24 hours of the pictures being released. Meet Kate Middleton: princess-in-waiting and newbie fashion icon.

Prince William is not happy. After threatening media outlets with legal action he released a statement through a royal aide. "He is really angry about this," said a senior aide. "What he wants more than anything is for the paparazzi to stop harassing her."

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In response, executives at News International, the company that includes the Sun, the News of the World, the Times and the Sunday Times, have told editors not to use paparazzi photographs of Middleton. Policing regular punters with camera phones, video recorders and access to the internet over the coming months and years is going to be another thing entirely.

The fact that Middletonmania is escalating just a month after the conclusion of Lord Stevens's inquiry into the death of his mother Diana Princess of Wales almost 10 years ago will doubtless be on the mind of the 24-year-old prince, who is thought to blame the paparazzi for his mother's death. And while Wills will always have their sympathy in this regard, what is really exercising the British nation seems to be the possibility that they may be witnessing the birth of another People's Princess. "I'm no Diana," Kate is reported to have told friends. Quite. But she is Kate, a celebrity who has almost reached the point where she can be described by just her first name. (La Moss must be raging.)

Despite Prince William having told interviewers that he has no wish to marry until he is 28 or 30, the rumours persist. Middleton and her parents were invited to his passing-out ceremony at Sandhurst Military Academy last month, and the occasion is viewed as significant. The royal girlfriend is also said to be close to the Queen and even received an invitation to Christmas dinner. Evening Standard journalist Robert Jobson is so convinced of the impending nuptials he has already written a book called William's Princess. The Woolworths retail chain is ready to roll out more than €10 million worth of "Wills and Kate" souvenir tat including tea-towels, mugs and mobile phones.

The clincher, though, is the following serendipitous factoid: shortly before she became engaged to Prince Charles, Lady Diana Spencer was snapped by press photographers as she was given a parking ticket. Kate Middleton was last week snapped in the possession of, wait for it, a parking ticket. And, to put the tin lid on it, Middleton is also said to have had a picture of Prince William on the wall of her boarding school when she was a teenager.

Actress Katie Holmes had a picture of Tom Cruise on her bedroom wall as a youngster and look what happened to them.

If Prince William does pop the question, Middleton will just have to get used to every spot, every bad hair day and every fashion faux pas being analysed ad nauseam in the media and by the camera phone brigade. Last week was just a taster of the life she can expect to lead.

Observers say she appears ready for royal life and that, despite being a commoner - her descendants were coalminers - the beautiful brunette has perfect credentials. She is discreet, demure, photogenic and stylish in an uncannily Diana-like way. "Lamb dressed as mutton," as one commentator put it. Her rather un-Diana-like confidence - "William is lucky to have me," she is reported to have told friends - should prove a useful weapon in royal life.

But it's her "ordinariness" that's being celebrated by fans and media desperate for Prince William to pop the question - if by ordinary they mean having millionaire parents, a posh boarding school education, a life of endless privilege and a real live prince as your long-term boyfriend. Bloody people.