The book was first published around 1992/3, so quite what the point is of filming it 25 years later, I fail to see, and I wish whoever was responsible hadn't bothered.

Puerile jokes about Charles's ears, the (late) Queen Mother's fondness for horse racing, the (late) Princess Margaret's fondness for cigarettes and gin & tonic - it's all here, and it really doesn't work.

Now top off the whole sorry confection with references to the Princess of Wales still being alive and living abroad somewhere with Dodi Fayed and you start to see how crushingly unfunny and indeed irrelevant this is. It is truly awful.

I've tried to imagine how, or indeed if this might actually have been funny at the time it was written, when some of the characters were still alive and would have meant something to the readers, but I just can't see it.

Not even the excellent cast can save it - it is the biggest turkey of this Christmas.

This could have been so much better. The book written by the late Sue Townsend. I've read the book on numerous occasions over the last 20 years and it's not at all how I pictured it. Where was Prince Phillip? Why was he excluded? It seemed very rushed. Johnny Vegas casting as Spiggy was about the only decent thing.

Such a shame. Sorry Sue.

This could have been so much better. Most of the book seemed to have been overlooked. It seemed like they only took the basic premise of the novel with only a couple of threads remaining but those was drastically trimmed to leave a totally too short running time. Would have more sense to make a 6 part half hour series. Waste of an excellent cast