I’m sorry to repeat the “I’m not a royalist, but…” qualification to what follows, but here we go. I’m not a royalist but I was greatly saddened to see Kate Middleton make a public statement about something very personal. I couldn’t believe what I was watching, to be honest, and straight away I wondered why on earth she had made it. The most likely reason, I concluded, was that she either felt she needed to say something to the public or had been bounced into doing so by her advisors and/or because of the media and the public’s voracious appetite for information. Then, the hope might be, that Kate might be afforded privacy. Fat chance.

My feeling is that Kate has bought herself some time, that’s all. The media circus just goes on and on, primarily because – and this is the sad bit – people want to know everything. I am not wrong about this, either. It is a fact that millions of people will buy their newspapers today and very few will say, “Well, the disgraceful way in which the papers have treated Kate means I am not going to buy my usual paper today.” They might tut-tut and say how awful it all is, but you know sales won’t dip at all. Quite the opposite.

The lowest form of human life, the dishonourable member for Rochdale, Gorgeous George Galloway, speculated that Kate was dead. He said: “Princess Kate has been missing for almost 80 days. There’ve been three faked photos and millions of rumours. What are the royals covering up? Is she dead or has she downed tools?” Don’t you dare say, well that’s just Galloway, isn’t it? No one takes him seriously.” But over 12,000 people in Rochdale did at the recent by election in the full knowledge of what he is really like. They made him their MP and it’s surely likely that many others round the country love him for “telling it like it is”?

Then, there’s my old club Bristol Rovers, whose community trust (CT), which is an independent charity connected closely to the club, last week posted an hilarious “joke” about Kate’s absence:

Ha ha ha. How we laughed, especially when we found out just how serious Kate’s condition was. That was the cue for the CT to quietly delete the video from its twitter feed, but I took a screenshot just to illustrate just how brainless and cruel some people can be.

Of course, it’s not just Galloway or a football club’s community department showing their heartlessness. Just search X for comments about Kate and William when they were out shopping a week or so ago. ‘THAT’S NOT KATE. IT’S A DOPPELGANGER!” The media frenzy elsewhere has only been marginally more tasteful (or is less distasteful?) and I plead guilty as charged for getting sucked into it at one point because it’s very easy to fall for the conspiracy nonsense.

My guess is that following a period of respectful silence, the rumour mill will soon be back in full voice. Now we know Kate has cancer, how long before we demand to know what kind of cancer she has? It’s already happened with King Brian, who has his own cancer to deal with. It was only a few weeks ago when Piers Moron was demanding we be told the king’s actual diagnosis, it being untenable to keep it secret for any longer.

Ugly conspiracies and rabid piss taking – the dark side of the regular and social media, poisoning our broken country. It’s not good, is it?

When you see stuff like this, you wonder if it’s worth asking people to be kind because, frankly, a lot of people are not kind. On the contrary, they’re very unkind and, I’m afraid, some people, the conspiracy loons in particular, are beyond help.

I am not a royalist. Have I mentioned it before? But I am strongly supportive of anyone, whether it’s a family member, a friend or someone I don’t know who has cancer and I wish them a swift and full recovery. And if they are ill and don’t want a diagnosis made public, I feel I should make more of an effort to respect that and not concoct conspiracy theories or take the piss.

Be kind, yes. And engage brain before speaking/posting tosh on social media. I certainly need to. I’m not alone in that, am I?