So what went wrong in Windsor land? He was supposed to be a girl.

After all the fuss the BBC made about the law change that ensured equality for women should one find herself in line to the throne, She turns out to be a He.

But it was a nice thought anyway: equality for privileged people everywhere.

Anyway, the BBC are now working hard to catch up, but the damage is done. Last night, they were still bleating what-if-it-had-been speculation “after all there was no need to change the law but what if it had been a girl”.

Sorry, that story is dead, and will be for about a hundred years, but don’t feel obliged to bury it just yet.

You had to feel sorry for the Beeb. These were stories they’d lined up years in advance desperate to fill the hours, and you could sense their disappointment in having to handle yet another non-story (cf Mickleson Wins the Golf (long pause), and in other news a cat with no tail beats the heatwave … ).

They’d worked so hard on the girl theme that I fear the great British public are going to be convinced He’s actually a girl forever.

It will take some undoing. I’m reminded of Mike Leigh’s brilliant film Life is Sweet and the mother of the boy in the Bunnikins kiddie’s clothes shop who has to tell Wendy (Alison Steadman) the incontrovertible fact several times:

Wendy: “He’s not a girly boy is he?”

Mother: “No he’s a boy!”

Wendy: “He’s a boy’s boy.”

Mother “Yes he’s a boy.”

Russell Brand’s My Booky Wook describes the English working class phenomena of infant gender denial. This happens when a much-yearned-for girl turns out to be a boy, and is subsequently brought up as a girl anyway. It happens all the time and is well-documented in literature. Cf, the flowing golden locks of the boy in DH Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.

But what a blow for Britain. No girl baby! I feel mass infant gender denial setting in.

Brand was brought up as a girl and has clearly suffered no obvious ill effects … AND maybe the new royal He could be the first Nan Boy to be made king, nurtured tirelessly by a BBC desperate for pretty girl feelgood stories.

BBC female interviewer: “He’s not a girly prince is he?”

Kate: “No, he’s a prince!”

BBC female interviewer: “He’s really a prince’s prince.”

Kate: “Yes he’s a prince!”

Expect the BBC to slide into endless footage, not of the childhood Wills doing boy things, but of the childhood Princess Anne doing girl things.

After all, female royals are far more interesting regardless of the fact that the new royal is actually male when you have to justify an expensive state-owned rolling news channel.