[originaltext] After attending a performance at La Scala in Milan this evenin

After attending a performance at La Scala in Milan this evening, the Queen will retire to a $6,020-a-night three- bedroom suite on the 10th floor of the Principe di Savoia Hotel. Meanwhile, an extra room at $440-a-night has been booked on the floor below, purely to accommodate her shoes. There’s been nothing like it since the final days of Imelda Marcos.
   As with Imelda, swelling unpopularity has done nothing to moderate their behaviour. Quite the opposite: they are becoming ever more imperious. It’ s almost as if they have adopted the football hooligan’ s slogan: "no one likes us and we don’ t care."
   The latest victim is the parfumier John Stephen, who was asked to create four new scents for Her Majesty.
   "The Queen is happy that you mention the perfumes in your newsletter," a letter from Windsor Castle informed him.
   Shortly afterwards, however, Stephen received a letter from a royal press secretary, Dickie Arbiter. "I have now had an opportunity of discussing your press release with the Queen and her private secretary, and while the detail in it is accurate it does read like an advertisement... Members of the royal family and their residences cannot and should not be used in any way for advertising or promotion. Nor at any time do members of the royal family endorse commercial products."
   Not for nothing do the senior royals refer to themselves as "The Firm. Click on to the monarch’s official website and the first thing you see is a link to online booking of tickets for Buckingham Palace." Delve a little further and you’ll find a complete list of all the companies that are endorsed by the Queen, her husband, her heir or her mother.
   More than 1,000 holders of the "By Appointment... warrant benefit from this ancient system of product placement. The Queen Mother, for instance, is happy to have her name used in advertisements for the morning cereal Weetabix, HP Sauce, Hoover (suppliers of vacuum cleaners), Kimberley Clark (makers of the royal toilet paper), Rigby & Peller (providers of the Queen Mum’ s corsets) and Metro Cable TV, who ensure that she gets the Racing Channel. There are hundreds more, including the inevitable Tanqueray Gordon & Co of Basildon (gin distillers)." That old theatrical favorite, "Cigarettes by Abdullah, is regrettably absent: John Player and Sons are her snout-purveyors of choice."
   As the official line confirms, a warrant holder is permitted "to use the legend’ By Appointment’ and display the Royal Arms on his products, such as stationery, advertisements and other printed material..."
   Perhaps this had somehow slipped the sovereign’s mind when she ordered Arbiter to issue his pompous warning about the royal family’s stern refusal to be used "in any way for advertising or promotion".
   Incidentally, the website’s address is www. royal.gov.uk. Don’t make the mistake of trying www.queen.com or you’ll enter "the baddest sex site on the net which features such delights as Naked Old Grannies".
   Big Fat Horny Bitches and Just Hardcore ("We don’ t respect our women here!").
   I assume that even The Firm hasn’t yet diversified that far.