The royals in question are the Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and - Gasp! Swoon! - his wife, Princess Mary. Yes, that's right, the fairytale Aussie princess who once worked in a Sydney advertising agency and who pulled off the marital coup of the decade by bagging Frederik the not so great.

The editors of women's magazines have been in the throes of prolonged orgasm since the news broke and the announcement that Princess Mary will make her first official trip to Australia is certain to trigger further thigh-rippling spasms.

Our own little Mary a real life princess? And to think that once, she was just like the rest of us. It makes you proud to be an Australian. It also makes you want to be violently ill.

Still, it's nice to see a local girl getting on and get on she has, trousering a lazy $338,000 a year from the Danes for her personal expenses while helping Fred burn his way through a further $18 million a year, also thoughtfully provided by the Danes.

It would be reasonable to presume that with a weekly pay slip of almost $260,000 between them, Fred and Mary would be able to pick up their own hotel bills and travelling expenses should she become homesick and yearn to slip down to dear old Oz for a visit.

You would, however, be wrong if you were to think so, for while the Danes Do Down Under next March, the Australian taxpayers will be paying the tab.

Not that it will be all prawns on the beach at Bondi during the royal sojourn. Goodness no. Fred and Mary will be flat out, attending two dinners and the 200th birthday celebration of Hans Christian Andersen.

Just what benefits will befall the Australian taxpayer from the holding of a birthday celebration in Sydney for a long dead Danish teller of tall tales has not been made clear.

Still, we paid more than $600,000 towards the holiday expenses of royal layabout Prince Harry, which must have worked out at about $200,000 per photo opportunity - Harry sits on a stockyard fence, Harry rides horse, Harry has beer with locals - so Fred and Mary probably think that they are entitled to a handout for their holiday expenses.

Once word gets out that those gullible Australians are a tap on the shoulder for European royalty, I imagine that assorted flotillas of destitute princes and princesses, the dregs of the aristocracy, will set sail for Australia.

Will the Prime Minister send the Royal Australian Navy to turn the royals around? Will they be interned in barbed wire compounds on the Nullarbor Plain?

We can only hope that they don't attempt to throw children overboard. Weighed down as they would be with crowns, tiaras and solid gold chains, the poor little tots would sink in a moment.

Why do we do this? Why do we still fall about and start bobbing, curtsying and handing over the keys to the family silver every time some second-rate European anachronism appears on the horizon?

It's bad enough that we still have a state governor tooling around town in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and indulging in a hilltop Paddington mansion perched on a slice of taxpayer-owned real estate that has to be worth $50 million in anyone's money.

Any attempt to defend the relevance of royalty in 2004 was blown to shreds last week by one of their own number, the inimitable Prince Charles who moaned in a memo: "People think they can all be popstars, High Court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability."

Necessary work? The man in question is unemployable and has bludged on the British taxpayer since birth. Natural ability? The only natural abilities he has ever demonstrated have been those which have seen him excel in uttering inanities and falling off polo horses.

I know for a fact that one of my ancestors used to make parasols for the royal family of the Netherlands. Plus my mother once told me that our family was related to the one-time king of all Ireland.