When I heard that King Charles had a film made about himself – a sometimes ‘elegiac’ film, to quote the BBC website – it seemed like such a very vulgar thing to do (and I speak as a highly vulgar person myself) that I thought it must be a joke.

Imagine the late Queen doing such an egotistical thing. She did, of course, allow the BBC to make a 1969 documentary called Royal Family in a bid to respond to that less deferential decade, showing herself grilling sausages and watching television, but came to regret it as she felt that it made the family look too normal – letting in daylight upon magic, as Walter Bagehot warned – and threatened to erode the mystique of the monarchy. In a show of very queenly imperiousness, she ordered the film to be locked away, and it has not been shown on television since 1977.

Imagine the late Queen doing such an egotistical thing

But though she may have thought better of the project, you can understand why the Queen thought it might have been an appropriate response to changing times – to the 1960s, in particular, when even Princess Anne, certainly no icon of the counter-culture, got up on the stage at a 1969 performance of the smutty hippie hit musical Hair and danced alongside the cast, garbed in a navy trouser suit.

This new abomination from King Charles – Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, to be screened on Amazon Prime Video next month – is the exact opposite of Royal Family. It seeks not to show King Charles as a normal guy, but as a visionary. It’s like something Robbie Williams would do – or even worse, Harry and Meghan.

Sucking up – sorry, ‘in attendance’ – at the premiere were the usual showbiz suspects who wheel themselves out to reassure this deeply mediocre man how special he is whenever the occasion........

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