Controversy raged last week over the issue of whether or not the Princess of Wales has regularly been called “Katie Keen”. In Endgame, his new book about the royals, Omid Scobie claims she has. Her “pliable” and “coachable” approach to royal duties led, he writes, to the nickname “Katie Keen” becoming a “popular refrain on social media for several years”. Tuesday’s Daily Mail disputes this: “A search of social media last night… found no mention of the moniker before it appeared in the book.”

So what’s going on here then? I must say, to my ears “Katie Keen” doesn’t have the ring of social media about it. Where’s the antisemitism or Islamophobia? Where are the makeup tips? Plus I’ve never heard her called that. Still, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. But the Mail’s view is clear: the disgraceful Scobie, relentless advocate of Meghan and Harry’s cause, has made it up as a vicious slur. How dare he call her keen, thinks the Mail, and suggest other people have also called her keen?!

Scobie and the Mail are at loggerheads but they agree on one thing: it’s not nice to be called keen. Keen is an insult and the notion of her being keen undermines the Princess of Wales’s image and makes her a less suitable person to go around opening things and shaking people’s hands.

The question this weird consensus raises is clear: what’s the problem with being keen? Isn’t it good to be keen? Before you entirely despair of my understanding of humanity, I do get it that some people don’t like........

© The Guardian