Ms. Hilton’s defining moment was a webcam video of herself with a loomin phallus in her mouth, whereas Lady Diana Spencer at the age of 19 was beet-red-faced with embarrassment when a tabloid photographer snapped her with her infant charge outside a nursery school in a pose against the sunlight that revealed her shapely legs.

Diana took her celebrity and leveraged it into such moments of global humanitarian impact as being the first member of the British Establishment to kiss an AIDS baby, grasping the bandaged hand of a leper without gloves, and walking in an uncleared mine field to bring the media spotlight to the victims of anti-personnel mines. In her entire 16 years as Princess of Wales she was never once caught looking anything but her absolute best. Unlike Britney, Lindsay or any other of the pitiful starved waifs attached to hair weaves, she never acted out her private pain by throwing up in the backseat of a car, winding up in rehab or displaying her shaved pudenda to a stricken nation. If anyone else can think of a further point of resemblance between these two, suggestions gratefully received.

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I never for one moment thought the Prince William and Kate Middleton relationship was actually over. It merely went underground to hide from the feral media beast. It was typical somehow of the British press to immediately assume that William had dumped Kate because her mother didn’t have the right accent.

All my palace sources informed me that it was Kate who’d gone extremely cold-feet-ish about the situation. Originally, I am told, William had wanted Kate to be one of the presenters at the memorial concert for Diana this Sunday, July 1 — a notion nixed by the queen herself, who said, “We don’t want another media queen like Diana.” Buckingham Palace courtiers soon began to use the same on-message word about Kate — “flaky,” which is palace euphemism for way too much press and getting a little too demanding about having her own voice.

But make no mistake: William is nuts about Kate. The two of them had even canvassed an engagement announcement between the Sunday concert and the memorial service for Diana in August before it was all called off.

Now they’ve been sighted together. Don’t bet on the poised and private Miss Middleton being counted out as the future Her Maj.

On the other hand, why would she want it? Being Princess of Wales even post-Diana is almost a fate worse than death. The romance with the bachelor prince all begins as it did in Diana’s case with the dream but swiftly, even by the time of the honeymoon, will turn into the scream. What people often fail to understand about Diana’s story is that it wasn’t just the Camilla issue that was the curse. It was the oldness, coldness and dismal inevitability of the royal routine that made Diana feel as if she had been sealed living in a tomb. William can only handle it because he was born to it. Thanks to Diana’s nurturing as a wonderfully touchy-feely mom, William comes across as modern and young and hot and informal, but he is also, in one of Diana’s favorite phrases about the family, “Windsorized.” At heart William is a very conservative boy — he loves hunting, shooting and fishing. He wants to be a farmer, and he has been steeped from the cradle in the inevitable duty that is his lot.