Five years after Princess Diana's death, Roisin Ingle looks at how life is working out for her elder son.William is now almost as precious as the crown jewels
What would Diana have made of it all? Her vain streak would almost certainly have been tickled by the adoration Prince William has garnered since her death.
"Now, darling," she might have said, as he regaled her with tales of the female university students waiting for hours just to ogle the winsome, blond six-footer as he knocked back Jack Daniel's in the local pub.
"Britney is available, and you know she has a crush on you. Why not give her a call? The future king of England and the Princess of Pop? What fun! Just don't tell your father."
Prince William: he's rich, he's a dish, he's a prince. Yet five years after his mother's death, the phenomenon of Willsworship, once on course to eclipse Dianamania, appears to have reached manageable levels.
Female applicants to St Andrew's University in Scotland, where William studies History of Art, increased by more than 40 per cent last year when news broke that he would be a fixture on campus.
But recently, locals in the university-cum-golf town on Scotland's east coast have said that the Will-spotting activities are a distant memory. "He now keeps a low profile and blends in as much as he can with the other students, and people pretty much leave him alone," said a local hotelier.
When he fell off his newly acquired motorcycle recently, those who recognised him turned away in deference to the young royal's hyper-sensitivity about unsolicited advances. He was eventually helped to his feet by two elderly women who didn't know they were talking to the future King William V.
A flick of his eye-lashes and a shy Diana-like smile regularly send young women, old ladies and the paparazzi into a frenzy not dissimilar to the fuss created when his mother ventured out in yet another show-stopping dress.
But Diana's fiercely protective motherly side might have had other considerations about William's celebrity, no matter how low-key and stage-managed his appearances have become.
Prince William is now seen both within the royal family and by his adoring public as the saviour of the monarchy.
As he and his younger brother, Harry, struggled to cope with their mother's death, the palace has done little to discourage her eldest son's evolution into the official sex symbol of the traditionally unpretty royal family.
In that respect, William is now almost as precious as the crown jewels.
Thanks mostly to the popularity of the prince and the slow rehabilitation of Prince Charles - to whom he is said to be very close - the monarchy has seen a turnaround in media and public hostility that threatened its very foundations when Diana's brother lambasted it from a Westminster pulpit.
Back then, Earl Spencer insisted the two boys would not be constrained by the hierarchy who drove his sister to the brink. They would be allowed to "sing", he said.
All signs, however, point to William becoming a pillar of the establishment his mother grew to detest. After his degree, he looks set to join the army and take on official royal duties by the age of 30.
Born on June 21st, 1980, the prince was christened William Arthur Philip Louis by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Buckingham Palace on the queen mother's 82nd birthday.
Even as a child, he was as photogenic as his mother, delighting staff at nursery school from the age of three.
We learned about his childhood antics - going missing at Highgrove and being found in the larder drinking cherry-ade - and watched him grow from a shy sometimes diffident child into the William who does Ali G impressions and takes his top off at polo games. From His Royal Shyness to His Royal Sexiness in 20 tumultuous years.
Unlike Diana when she entered the royal family, William has had plenty of time to get used to the glare of the spotlight. Royal-watchers say he is well adjusted, sensitive, imaginative and intelligent. The boy who pushed tissues under his mother's door when he heard her crying is now a man who has been known to put his foot down when the ever-present bodyguards step over the mark.
In his gap-year the prince travelled to Africa. He mucked in with the other youths and even cleaned toilets. "No problem," he said, when asked what he thought of his new duties.
Back home, he enjoys swimming, football and polo and hanging around with the wraparound-sunglasses-and-champagne set dubbed the NGY, New Gloucestershire Youth.
Insiders say he displays a healthy disrespect for the media - he has been known to swear at photographers in bars and restaurants - while also inheriting his mother's ability to play the press at their own game.
His public are also important to him. He personally sifts through the thousands of letters, teddy bears and more dubious gifts that arrive at his office and, while he has a personal assistant, is adamant important decisions are left to him.
Prince William's popularity, especially with British youth, shows no sign of waning. Asked by a recent BBC poll who should be the next head of state, 18- to 24-year-olds picked William over Charles or an elected president.
Such rousing endorsements for a royal are a godsend for the House of Windsor, a place of such turmoil during the Diana days.
Then again, back when the People's Princess was just a child-minder in girlish dress, the royal family believed they had chosen a malleable wife for Charles, never imagining that she, with her pesky penchant for not keeping quiet, would be so damaging to the reputation of the royals.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if Prince William, who in looks at least is a male version of Mummy, woke up one day and realised that the whole notion of the monarchy was a royal pain in the posterior and jacked it in for a job as a gamekeeper in an African safari?
Yes, and corgis might fly.