William & Kate after they announced they were expecting in January
Expect a massive media surge and wall to wall publicity now that the royal baby is on the way and Kate and Wills have delivered - literally.

Palace officials confirmed early Monday morning that Kate is in the early stages of labor. Judging by Twitter the American magazines are more interested about the royal babe than the Brits themselves.

It has always been so.

Our proud republic, founded on a war to get rid of a British monarch, gets all weak at the knees when the British royals are the topic.

But there is another reason this year to make whoopee.

There’s a commercial motive of course. This is the silly season where newspapers and magazines go to die as people take off on vacation.

A royal birth nicely trumps all that, the hottest selling story of the year occurring at the slowest time.

It is the gift that keeps on giving. There will be the first photos, the furore over the name (Honey Boo not likely) and a fusillade of stories about everything from the child’s birth sign to astrological predictions.

It is a fun story of course, and a harmless one, even if the overkill will drive you nuts after a few weeks.

The child’s birth is announced on an old fashioned easel at Buckingham Palace.

Imagine that in this age of Twitter. It is like driving a Model T ford at the Formula One Grand Prix.

The Americans will lap it all up, quaint, old fashioned etc. We’ll hear about names, breast feeding, lines of succession etc.

And eventually we’ll get back to real news.

For now it is a royal world and we are just living in it.

Was it for this, George Washington lead us etc.