Why I can’t wait for the Royal Wedding to be over

As I write this there are exactly four days three hours and 42 minutes until the Royal Wedding. To celebrate this fact, here is a picture of the happy couple depicted as toppings on a pizza - the way in which all such events should be commemorated apparently.

While my ability to countdown from seven may underwhelm you, I have been impatiently waiting for this week to climax for the past 120 days. Of course I am gleefully overjoyed at the love between Prince William and Kate Middleton - akin to a giddy schoolgirl — however for my own selfish reasons I cannot wait until it's all over. I'm probably more excited about the honeymoon than William. For you see, once the wedding is over so too is the circus that has engulfed the event for months.

Now, before I explain why I'm being such a stick-in-the-mud, I should try and pre-empt some of the angry folk out there who will misjudge me as a corgi-eating, flag-burning anti-royalist. Couldn't be further from the truth. In fact I actually quite like the Royal Family. Sometimes I just look at them and go 'aah' (true story, actually, not Philip) — like bad teeth and talking about the weather, the Royals are part of our national identity and for that reason alone they're ok in my book.

I digress. Without meaning to sound boastful I have been fortunate enough to have worked on a few big events in this job, the UK and US elections most notably, but nothing has prepared me for the all-encompassing hell that is the marriage of Kate and Wills. Or to be more specific… the build up to it.

You see, for every big event that grabs the country's attention there are approximately 467,543,567.99 'bright spark' PRs and advertising companies who think the best way to get their client's soup/hotel/sandwich/loo roll/book/car/sex toy some attention is to somehow make it relevant to that event. Okay maybe not sex toy.

So every day for the past four months I have been inundated with dozens of emails from smug PRs and companies who think they're the only people to have cunningly thought of this ingenious angle. Boo hoo for me, right?

The most annoying thing is that sometimes this tactic works. How many times have we seen bizarre stories in the press these past few months where there has been a jellybean that looks like Kate Middleton, Papa John's aforementioned Royal Wedding pizza, or the Royal Wedding Poop-Scoop? The press shuffles these stories around willy-nilly in a desperate attempt to try and maintain interest and momentum.

What kind of message does that send to these advertisers? That it's ok to hijack the Royal Wedding with their tat until the event itself becomes so engulfed with trivial crap that it loses all meaning and becomes a farce? The poor old voting referendum on 5 May has hardly had any coverage, most likely because it wasn't sponsored by Durex.

If we allow the precedent of companies hijacking the news to be set, what will come next? When there's a disaster of biblical proportions will we see companies bringing out lifejackets made of Plenty kitchen roll. (It's ever so absorbent so it could soak up all the floodwater and form its own little squelchy tissue island.) Or perhaps next time there's a bush fire instead of using water to put it out L'Oreal will insist we douse the flames with its shampoo. Because it's worth it. We could even dangle Cheryl Cole over the flames to apply it. Better still, next time there's a gunman on the loose Gazza could show up with some KFC. Oh wait, that one actually happened. All joking aside, I am looking forward to the next presidential election debate brought to you by Go Compare and a meerkat.

I should point out that these companies just came on my television during an ad break so they've been completely plucked at random. In other words, please don't sue me.

To summarise, I wish Kate and Wills all the happiness in the world (except for my share) but I cannot wait for the circus to end and for normality to descend. At least we'll have a breather between now and the Olympics.

When 2012 comes — and if the world still exists - I expect all the chocolate in the country to be made into the shape of a Seb Coe's face and I'll be disappointed if at least one lingerie manufacturer doesn't try to launch its own Olympic sport using a bra to slingshot Boris Johnson to France.

Now, let's all look forward to this wedding and look at the pizza again. Oh and since I'm here and all, here's our excellent Royal Wedding site. Ahem.