Dear Mr Luyt, thank you so much for the signed World Cup rugby ball. It took me some time to realise that all 120 autographs on it were yours, but Charles and I think it a charming addition to our gift vault, and have mounted it next to our shrunken human head. Next time you are in London please do come to the palace gift shop and sign the visitors’ book. Yours sincerely, Diana, Princess of Whales Wails Wales. (Sorry … those bloody Welsh and their spelling!)
Dear Prinses, please don’t be so formal: my closest friends call me Meneer or Baas, and I would be honoured if you would do the same. Please accept another small token of my esteem. Yours, Oswald Louis Petrus Poley Luyt.
Dear Baas Luyt, thank you so much for your gift of your old rugby socks. Their bouquet is rustic, yet cheeky — reminiscent, one feels, of a damp Labrador some weeks dead. Thank you also for enclosing the draft manuscript of your autobiography: my Afrikaans is not what it should be, but the picture on the front looks jolly fascinating. Yours, et cetera.
Dear Prinses, At the risk of sounding gushy, you are not half bad considering you are a Rooinek agitator and a woman, and you live in a country that is a festering pustule oozing with homosexuality, Satanism, rock music and Elton John. Manchester is quite nice, though. The rest is crap.
Dear Baas, I am so enjoying reading Hensoppers, Communists, Traitors, the Judas Pienaar and His Place in the Global ANC Rugby Conspiracy. I have never read such a long book before: tomorrow night I shall reach page 80, and then rest for a few days and admire the wonderful pictures. Which reminds me: the quartermaster general of the Royal Marines has asked me to ask you what your diet is, since he thinks it could feed an army. Any secret tips? Personally, I find wheat-free bread sticks and dairy-free yoghurt do very nicely when one needs comfort food. XX HRH Di.
Dear Prinses, usually I start my day with a breakfast of quail tongues and deep-fried moose-haunch, but bloody Rian Oberholzer has hung a big picture of Mandela and the Judas holding up my World Cup on the dining room wall and now I can’t get any food down. Soentjies, LL.
Dear Baas, I think you are being far too sensitive. Will Carling once told me that Mr Pienaar looked splendid in his underpants (I still don’t know what he was doing in Will’s underpants), and as for Mr Mandela, when I met him he was a complete gentleman. He told me all about his childhood in the West Indies, and how difficult it was getting a lead role in Hollywood in the 1960s. Funny, he kept telling me that his name was Sidney Poitier. Do you suppose that was his tribal name? I know he’s a Maori or a Zulu or a Mormon or something, and they do have queer names!
Dear Prinses, I think our relationship has progressed to a point where I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to address me as Field Marshall or Your Honour. Meanwhile, dinners have become impossible: Rian sits there staring at me with those baleful little blue eyes of his, shooting rubber bands at me and chanting “I’m the boss of Sarfu and you’re not!” And no one wants to vote for my political party, despite my stylist saying I have the chins of Marlon Brando and the hair of Napoleon. What should I do? My chef suggests food-poisoning, but no one organises decent fatal poisonings any more. Help! LL.
Dear Baas Field Marshall, when I get cross I donate money to the clearing of land mines. They’re so clever these days: if it were up to me I’d drop bags of £1 coins out of a zeppelin and see if any mines went off, but Prince Philip says that’s a stupid idea, like giving Africa independence. Prince Philip fell asleep in a scone the other morning; looked pretty terminal. The London Stock Exchange surged 100 points at the news, but the Queen woke him up with a kipper across the chops. Don’t know why I mentioned it … damn this new hairspray, it makes me all woozy.
Dear Prinses … getting dark … afraid … Rian’s beady eyes … rubber bands … hensoppers … Judas starring in Lays ads on TV … can’t look but can’t look away … government taking over rugby … planting chips in brains … Lays … die kreun van ossewa … urgh.