One thing we can say for sure about the royal brothers William and Harry, whether they despise each other or not, is that they share a total absence of artistic taste.

The commemorative sculpture they unveiled of their mother and three random kids in the grounds of Kensington Palace last week, and on which they collaborated with the sculptor, is so bad, so mawkish and lifeless, so unlike Diana, that I thought it was of Emily Maitlis from Newsnight on a school run.

It’s like some kind of bad religious iconography, which may be intended, given that she has almost achieved sainthood in some quarters. The only thing missing is a halo. It should have featured one of those plastic helmets given to her by the Halo charity when she publicised their minesweeping efforts in Angola.

It is almost as bad – all right, not nearly as bad – as the gold statue Mohamed al-Fayed installed in Harrods when he owned it, of his son Dodi and Diana holding left hands and with their right ones torturing some winged creature.

And nearly, but not quite, as the awful bust of Cristiano Ronaldo at Madeira Airport, which looked more like The Head from Art Attack than the footballer.

A second attempt by sculptor Emanuel Santos was little better – it was bland, but at least it resembled a human, just not Ronaldo.

Al-Fayed had a thing about bling statues.

When he was chairman of Fulham FC in 1999, he invited Michael Jackson to Craven Cottage for a game against Wigan Athletic which his team ended up winning 2-0 – although it was no Thriller.

Then he installed a hideous likeness of Jackson on a plinth outside the ground. Jackson also visited Exeter City but they didn’t prop one outside for fans to throw pies at.

But fast-forward to Diana and that statue, created by Ian Rank-Broadley (Rank-Rotten surely?). Diana was a

well-meaning and smart young woman, if not lightbulb illuminating, sucked in and spewed out by the royals – mainly by the future king – and sold a false promise. Hers was a sad life, a minor tragedy, and those of us who have lost loved ones appreciate what her children feel and why they want to cherish her memory. But memories belong in the heart, the mind – not cast in zinc. But at least it will provide additional perches for the pigeons.

The heebie GBs

You may not have seen GB News yet. So, to save you the trouble of searching for it before it disappears, here’s a brief guide. It isn’t a news channel – that’s a trade descriptions misdemeanour. Not even fake news, which is a disappointment – that at least would be entertaining.

It’s a radio talk-in with pictures – when they work, which is infrequently. It features right-wing loons, almost exclusively male, in a bunker, or perhaps a blacked-out bedroom with blast-proofing –the only thing missing is the tinfoil hats.

There’s no balance, just the same pub views you’ve heard better expressed before you excused yourself. I’d complain to Ofcom, the broadcasting gauleiters, if I believed in them or if I could be bothered.

Broadcasters, narrowcasters and nutters in mummy’s basement should be able to able to express views as long as they don’t break the law, and as long as we aren’t forced to pay for them like the BBC. And, of course, as the technology has got cheaper nearly everyone can preach to the choir, like GB News is doing. It makes you wonder why Labour or the SNP or that small party with the funny chap who’s always up to vacuous stunts don’t launch their own channels. I’m available for consultation for a fee, considerately less than the £60 million which went into GB.

It was the creation, the brainstorm, of Andrew Neil, who is a great broadcaster and interviewer. But he’s now taken time off from the channel, who knows for how long? Perhaps he’s polishing his CV? There is still Neil Oliver, who may get a gig advertising shampoo. As well as some chap from The Sun who rants about lockdown,

Anyway, that’s quite enough time administering the last rites.

A truly Dark act

IN the early hours of the morning the fire lit up the dark skies, some of the darkest skies in Britain. From below, you could see the wood and steel building, on a hilltop on the edge of Dalmellington, burn to the ground. A vandal, a pyromaniac, or a group of them, had set it ablaze.

The Dark Sky Observatory was one of Scotland’s important tourist attractions. More than that it was a unique place to teach not just children but anyone about astronomy and the limitless wonders of the universe.

Why would anyone want to destroy that?

Two large telescopes, under a massive dome, pointed at the skies and homed in on the planets. It opened in 2012 and, in 2017, it was expanded to add a digital planetarium. Why would anyone want to destroy such a beautiful and rewarding and awesome place?

The man behind it is the laird of the Craigengillan Estate, on whose land the skeleton and ashes of his endeavour now lie. Mark Gibson says he has put a lot of his life and soul into creating it. Why would anyone do that to another person?

Gibson didn’t just dream and create the observatory – he transformed the run-down estate. I don’t normally have much time and sympathy for lairds and landowners but I make an exception in his case. If there is any justice the cretins who did this will go down for a long time and another observatory will rise on the ruins.

Bad idea in Irvine

NOT at all the Big Idea but the Big Mistake. It cost £15 million, largely public money, to create the science centre on the spot on the Ardeer peninsula in Irvine where Alfred Nobel created dynamite and later repented by donating the prize. The Millennium Commission put up £5.5m, the EU

£5m, £500,000 came from Scottish Enterprise and there was £3m of private money.

It was meant to celebrate the history of invention and inventors. There was even a walkway across the water to the centre called the Bridge of Scottish Invention, with a retractable bit in the middle so tall ships could pass through, although who knows where to?

It opened in April 2000 and closed three years later because of lack of visitors.

It now stands, 18 years later, with a large, visible, glass arched front with the rest of it covered in turf, a hump in the Earth like a Hobbit’s burrow. The middle span of the bridge has been retracted – pour décourager les vandales – so the only way you can reach it is to string a wire across and shimmy, or rock up in a dinghy, the thinking being that potential miscreants have neither.

It was killed by the opening in 2001 of the other publicly-funded Glasgow Science Centre, operating in a much larger catchment area. That cost £75m to build, with more than £37m from, again, the Millennium Commission.

What was the logic in funding two centres which would obviously compete with one another and the larger bound to win? Did one arm of the commission bureaucracy not talk to the other? Are there any surviving heads to knock together?

On the Ardeer peninsula, then, lies the monument to crass stupidity and the careless squandering of public money, with the grass growing ever taller. You could grab a coffee from the excellent Gro cafe on the harbourside and contemplate, at leisure, this shameful public disaster across the water.