Miranda the Devine, and an astonishing Wankely award winning effort, which will make you see dead people or experience nausea ...

(Above: Who? Out with the old, in with the new, and everything old is new again. Standing by the for the next commemorative 25p coin).

The irony is of course that conservative governments are just as inclined to be moralising, interfering and insufferable as the worst kinds of socialist governments you might care to drag out of the closet.

The fuss about "happiness" currently enveloping the UK is a classic example of do gooder mayhem, led by David Cameron, and no better summary of its absurdity might you find outside The Times paywall than Dominic Lawson's piece If you're happy and you know it vote Tory.

Might visitors from the UK now swarm to The Australian in the antipodes as their way of getting a Sunday Times fix?

Not to worry, Lawson, who carries impeccable conservative credentials, says all that needs to be said about "happiness" and the British government's obsessive desire to go Scandinavian, from reminders of soma through Uncle Joe to Jeremy Bentham, all considered helpful guides to happiness at one time or another. (And remember existentialist secularists know how to do "misery" better than your average dumbwit conservative ...)

Now we anxiously await the judgement of the Institute of Public Affairs, which surely should advise that Cameron and his acolytes must be swept from power forthwith. And when they're finished there, how about a series of articles on those busybodies fronted by Tony Abbott, including the Pellist heretics and the Jensenist nepotics, always insisting that their way is the only true way to happiness.

Okay it's Sunday, and I'm still dreaming. How to wake from the nightmare and plunge into a brisk bout of unhappiness?

Well surely reading Miranda the Devine is as close to being an iceberg swimmer in winter, bracing, chilling and offensive, all in one, but in The New Queen of Hearts, I'm more reminded of what used to happen in the bush on a picnic, when as children we'd eat too many lollies, then go for a swim in the brown, muddied, cold river waters.

Stomach cramps. Nausea. And a desire to rush into the bushes to up chuck, not least because the parents, knowing they'd delivered their parental warning, tended to gloat rather than sympathise.

Recently Crikey has been handing out various awards to newspapers for their coverage of royal events, as in A right royal fawning over Bib Willie and Babykins (a Wankely for the lot of them), and in their request for readers to send in any nauseating royal wedding coverage, in Royal Wedding Watch.

Stop the presses, hold the front page, the late-breaking Devine wins the nausea stakes hands down, while barely breaking into a brisk canter.

There were broadcasts of the actual event - none of which, the pond confesses, did the pond watch - but even so, from brief snatches, it seemed possible to work out who was saying what to whom, and see what was happening.

So the redundant Devine embarks on a profoundly tautological exercise by repeating it all in slavering detail, as if somehow how her enfeebled, sodden, sugar-saturated pen was mightier than the television camera.

In case you missed it, here's the Devine repeating what you saw on the broadcast:

When Prince William, his back to her, first turned and sneaked a peek at his bride as she walked towards the altar, a broad smile spread across his face, and he and best man Prince Harry exchanged a brotherly joke.

As she climbed the stairs to the altar at 11.08 am London time, William turned to her, leaned close and murmured “You look amazing. You look beautiful”, which made her beam. She licked her lips and went back to smiling demurely, the two of them a poised and determined team in the performance of their lives.

It's all there, the journalistic tricks, right down to the note about it being London time, as opposed to Moscow or Antarctic time, adjectives and adverbs littering the purple prose, weaving a garment of tripe worthy of a papal bum.

We skipped the Devine's description of the dress, in case any readers might be diabetics, and so inclined to toxic shock. But be warned, even readers with the strongest minds might find themselves plunging into a complete mental breakdown if they read on:

William’s voice was croaky when he first said “I will”, but his voice grew stronger and resolute. Kate’s voice though low in volume was clear and unwavering, betraying no sign of anxiety.

In her first job as the future Queen of England, Princess Catherine - as she will inevitably be known - showed she has nerves of steel, as she sailed serenely through the wedding ceremony, daunting as it must have been to have the eyes of the world upon her.

Oh so brave and plucky and resolute, and already promoted by the Devine to the job of Queen of England, ahead of Camilla Parker Bowes, who can never be queen of England, let alone queen of hearts.

Speaking of Chuck, the talking tampon, is there any mention of him by the Devine? Glad you asked:

How different to the nervous, doomed ceremony of William’s parents 30 years earlier. William and Kate’s easy rapport was in stark contrast to the tentative, jarring strangeness of Diana and Charles on their wedding day. His parents had met just 13 times and were already suspecting they might be temperamentally unsuited.

This is a kind of historical revisionism, the past refracted through future events, since at the time, and despite a couple of stumbles in the wording, the Devines of that time were enraptured by Diana and Chuck, and blathered in the usual way about how, in a cynical time, the marriage could make one believe in fairy tales.

Poor Chuck keeps copping it from the Devine, and on she rambles:

... Charles, a renowned detail freak who developed a bloodshot eye in the days before the wedding, looked happy enough.

His mistress turned wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, once dubbed the “Rotweiler” by her rival Diana, was smiling by his side and he seemed satisfied with the manifestation of his green sensibilities in the church decorations.

Beautiful trees lined the aisles and flowers in shades of green, cream and white, gave a beauty and freshness to the ceremony in keeping with its atmosphere of renewal and hope.
Britons feel the future of the monarchy is in good hands with level-headed William and Kate, who have proved a credit to their generation, in stark contrast with the self-engrossed hedonism of the previous batch of royals.

Yes, bugger off Chuck and your pet rotdweiler, all this greenie, save the planet, eek it's global warming time nonsense, when all you need is a lot of green in the décor to be truly greenie.

There's the usual reporting of views from the street, and the byline suggests that the Devine was actually in London, pounding the streets to come up with her hard hitting coverage of the insights and opinions of ordinary folk. How they just love the pomp and ceremony, and chatting to New Zealanders having a once in a lifetime experience, which tends to happen whenever someone leaves New Zealand and discovers there's a world out there. Revelatory, compelling stuff. Waiter, bring me another cherry ripe.

The way the Devine scribbles, you'd swear she was right inside the church with a front row view:

Inside the Abbey the moment came all too soon in the service, with its soaring music and magnificent backdrop, when the wild-haired Archbishop of Canterbury said: “I pronounce that they be man and wife together.”

Well before, in a wild-eyed, wild-haired way, we pronounce the Devine's piece an unreadable piece of drivel, so outrageously over the top that Crikey should at once sweep aside all contenders, and hand the Devine a lifetime Wankley award, can we just cover the afterglow.

Relax folks, all will be well, and remember you heard it from the Devine first:

Britons feel the future of the monarchy is in good hands with level-headed William and Kate, who have proved a credit to their generation, in stark contrast with the self-engrossed hedonism of the previous batch of royals.

The bookies are already betting on how long the marriage will last - whether they will make it to their 10th anniversary. But the faith the public has in the newlyweds was reflected in the 20 to one odds.

Yes, bugger off Chuck, you self-engrossed hedonistic greenie, the monarchy is safe, no thanks to you, and long may foreigners rule over Australia. And did we mention, take that bloody rotweiler with you ...

And then at the end, the Devine finds the time to put herself in the mind, in the head, of the unflappable Kate as she ...

... stepped through the glass swing doors of the Goring Hotel, into the Rolls-Royce Phantom VI waiting outside on empty Beeston Place for the nine minute journey to the Abbey. She travelled past Buckingham Palace and the thousands of journalists and TV crews camped out for a week in temporary buildings along her route.

And so on and so forth, until at the last moment, sweet Kate can take stock and marvel at how far she'd come, as indeed readers of the Devine can too, because they made it to the very end, the very last word, of this fine bit of wind, colour and pure Women's Weekly puffery.

But wait, there's more, to be found in the comments below, with an offer of a Mills and Boon contract, and this haunting thought:

Did anybody see Camilla being haunted by Diana’s ghost at the beginning of the ceremony ? To us spiritualists that was a revealing moment.

Look Miranda, we see dead people.

No, not the current royals, the dead royals haunting the current royals...

Well with ghostly spectres at a wedding, what a relief to know, thanks be unto the Devine, that everyone in Britain is now terribly happy, having experienced a regal vision in ivory lace and diamond, a moment as magic as real life gets.

That should heat up the baked beans for breakfast for at least the next week ...

Oh and on the way out, don't let the homophobia nip you in the bum on your way out:

At its heart, the royal wedding at Westminster Abbey was an affirmation of the power of love, and the importance of the institution of “holy matrimony” to bind a man and a woman together.

Such are the bilious days of the Devine's life.

Excuse me, I feel a fresh wave of nausea coming on ...

(Below: it's been ever so long since we allowed a lolcat on these pages, but somehow it seems to fit the mood).