As if the congregation didn't hold enough adulterers. The groom, standing weak-kneed at the altar, looks around, scans his family for evidence of fidelity ... no, not him, no, no, not him either ... the clan appears beset by an easy amnesia re: marital vows and liable to treat the sanctity of that institution void whenever three bishops and 45 paparazzi aren't present.

Just imagine how the divorcee bride feels with Princess Margaret hissing from the crypt as she is led up the aisle by a father-in-law who left his marriage certificate in the pocket of a suit that fell from fashion after a season. She's carrying a bouquet of forget-me-nots, her deceased mother-in-law's favourite flower. And her mother-in-law will not be forgotten. Not remembered, though, for fidelity.

I was just beginning to wonder if anyone in St George's Chapel took marriage seriously when a bishop minted in the multi-bridal wilds of Utah began to get fervent on the topic of LOVE. But then he went and spoiled it all by bellowing pieties first voiced by Martin Luther King. Now, MLK is a man worth quoting on almost any occasion but a wedding, where the massive spectre of his philandering must heckle and moan above the spoken word.

When the bishop went warp speed from the torpor of his Episcopal blandishments into a popeyed Southern Baptist shtick my immediate thought was that he was trying to ramp this sermon into a full-time gig. Leverage his single-serve global fame into a weekly syndicated hour of blather across the Midwest for those who have unluckily become too obese to attend an actual church and must wallow on their sofas and holler their amens at their flatscreens. Set himself up for life. Why not? People have fed off royal endorsements since capitalism began. He clearly picked the Queen as a sort of atomic-strength Simon Cowell, trapped in her pew, unable to do anything but smile while he shook his theological tail feathers at her to win Episcopal's Got Talent.

We could run through the full smorgasbord of stupefaction in the house, but for my money no one did it better than Zara Tindall for amused contempt. "Really? We finally let you people in, Americans from beyond the beachhead of civilisation that is Boston ... and you repay us by repeatedly name-checking Jesus?"