Hot on the heels of the now infamous photos of Prince Harry getting naked in Las Vegas, we are now being bombarded with tales of topless photographs being taken of his sister-in-law Kate at their remote holiday villa near Provence and sold to the highest bidder.

And the language being employed by the Palace press office is quite frankly ridiculous!  Kate is said to be in ‘agony’ while she and William are being unspeakably ‘brave’ as they are still managing to go tree climbing in the jungle or whatever it is they do for a living.

Now I know women in ‘agony’ and who are ‘brave’ because they have a serious or life-threatening illness. Perhaps we could save these words for when we really need them.

It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for her – I am sure it is extremely embarrassing to have such photos spread across the pages of gossip magazines but it’s surely time to put things into some sort of perspective.  She’s an attractive, young woman with a great figure (if a little skinny!) and this is, after all, the 21st Century when surely we aren’t shocked at the sight of a pretty girl with hardly any clothes on?

And let’s not forget that Kate is no stranger to baring her flesh for the cameras.  She came to the attention of Prince William when he saw her in a Fashion Show in 2002 while they were both studying at St. Andrews.  The Prince forked out £200 for a front seat at the charity student fashion show where Kate strode confidently down the catwalk in a see-through lace dress which revealed her black underwear. 

It also appears to be another epic fail by the Royal Protection Service.  As with Harry’s partying  antics, this again begs the question as to what their security people were doing.  If the paparazzi could see the couple by their remote swimming pool, why could the bodyguards not see the photographers and send them on their way?  Perhaps they were too busy enjoying the holiday themselves as would have appeared to have been the case in Vegas?

In a short statement issued yesterday, the palace said that legal proceedings for breach of privacy have been commenced in France and because the French have some of the strictest privacy laws in the world, I expect some hefty donations to charity will be made in the coming weeks.  However, with fines less harsh than in previous years, publications are more prone to take the risk as their boosted revenue will far outweigh the amount they will be forced to pay in damages.

Of course William and Kate are entitled to a degree of privacy when they are not on official engagements.  However, like many before them who have been photographed in such a way have discovered, there is a market in this celebrity obsessed world for such pictures and maybe, just maybe, she should have kept her kit on?