WHAT on earth are we to make of Paul Burrell; his revelations about Diana, Princess of Wales; the spiteful Spencers; his three-hour conversation with the Queen and the dramatic collapse of his trial?

But, most important of all, what are we to make of the allegations of male rape and a royal cover up?

George Smith, a former footman in the royal household and one-time valet to Princess Di, has accused an aide to the Prince of Wales of the sex attack and said that HRH sought to 'bury' the incident. He further alleges that the Queen's dramatic 11th hour intervention in Burrell's trial was Buckingham Palace's way of preventing details of the scandal emerging at the Old Bailey.

These are serious accusations and Prince Charles's appointment of his private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, to investigate the alleged cover up of the 1996 male rape will do little to allay the Royal Family's critics who say the Windsors are trying to execute a classic 'double shuffle'.

No one emerges from this sorry saga with credit and it looks likely to run and run. In the News of The World on Sunday, former TV personality Michael Barrymore claimed that Paul Burrell had tried to 'bed' him only days after Diana's death, flashing items of her jewellery in the hope that he (Barrymore) would be sufficiently impressed to be seduced.

Oh 'eck. Whether you believe Barrymore or Burrell is a matter of personal preference. I was stunned that Barrymore surfaced. I thought he was certain to stay out of the public eye following the revelations which accompanied the investigation into the death of Stuart Lubbock, found in the swimming pool at Barrymore's home. But surface he did, and the News of the World, which carried his story on page one, certainly did a serious hatchet job on Burrell. It's amazing how former 'lovers' emerge from the woodwork. Could it have something to do with the very large cheques the tabloids have a habit of waving? Surely not. It's the pursuit of truth!

I remember when Elvis died, how Diana Dors was among the ladies who 'confessed' to having had a ding dong with The King.

And how embarrassed must the Princes William and Harry be that their mum, the divine Princess Di, ventured from Kensington Palace to meet one of her string of lovers, supposedly dressed only in a fur coat? I very much doubt that dinner and polite conversation figured very highly on the menu that particular evening, but one never knows.

To be perfectly honest, I thought the stuff about Princess Di was a betrayal, irrespective of whether the case against Burrell was at best ill-conceived, at worst downright malicious. Did we really need to know what Di got up to in her nocturnal forays and do we give a monkey's? Frankly no. Her husband hadn't actually been squeaky clean in matters of marital fidelity, had he?