My newborn sentiment welcomes all babies — royal or otherwise

What an exciting time it must be to be a die-hard royalist. A newborn prince, a royal wedding in less than a month and enough Daily Mail and Telegraph souvenir supplement pages to fill an Olympic swimming pool.

Though they won’t like to admit to getting pleasure from the occasion, fervent republicans have enjoyed themselves too, recycling snarky comments on Twitter (“woman gives birth to baby” and the like).

But the rest of us, casual royalists let’s say, who have a soft spot for British traditions and ceremonial clothes, might in our heart of hearts fail to work up the same enthusiasm about successor No 5 as the House of Windsor’s last two recent arrivals.

Luckily for me, I adore babies. So the broody side is happy to see little James/Arthur/Kermit (delete as appropriate when Clarence House issues the announcement) feature heavily in papers, even if my soft royalist side is a bit exhausted.

Since my wife and I have our own baby on the way for the summer, I’ve become broodier still. As her due date approaches I find, to my embarrassment, that I’m developing a new excitement about upcoming celebrity births: Pippa Middleton, Rachel Weisz, Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black. God help me — even Kirsten Dunst.

I catch myself cooing at babies in newspapers, commenting to no one in particular about their cuteness. What do they weigh, I find myself asking. Where can I find more pictures? It’s almost enough to make me use Instagram.

When my own baby arrives, will my interest in famous people’s children vanish or intensify? In all likelihood I’ll just be too tired to form an opinion.

Museum appeal that rides on Rodin

“In my spare time I simply haunt the British Museum,” Rodin wrote in 1903 — 22 years after his first visit. “It is a most noble institution. My one regret is that I have not the time to frequent it more.”

Who can blame the BM for proudly quoting his words at the front of the catalogue for Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece? It’s just about the best bit of puffery for the institution it could get.

It also works. Critics have correctly praised how the show makes you look again at the Elgin Marbles with Rodin’s passion, but one could credibly make the case that the show does the same for the museum itself. Indeed, “Rodin and the British Museum” was the working title.

The pop of today is music to my ears

Along with the unreliability of public transport and politicians’ incompetence, there can be few grievances more common than the belief that pop music these days is the worst it’s ever been. But as an unashamed listener to what I suppose is best labelled “basic bitch” pop, I think that chart music is in a much better place now than it has been for some time.

A quick glance at the current Top 40 shows a wide variety of mainstream pop artists: Dua Lipa, Portugal the Man, Zayn, Cardi B, Sam Smith, Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran, The Greatest Showman soundtrack (OK, they can’t all be winners).

In contrast, think back to a decade ago, when the charts were plagued with auto-tune. Think of how we suffered through the idiocy of the Black Eyed Peas and LMFAO, the droning mediocrity of Nickelback, and the unbearable chirpiness of Scouting for Girls.

Things are definitely looking up.

Stop monkeying about with our cash

Imagine donating money to the US animal welfare group Peta because you hate dog-fighting, or big-game hunting, or the many other horrible things we do to animals. Would you not then be furious if your money were spent on an attempt to give a monkey copyright over a selfie?

Since 2015 Peta has sought to give Naruto, a crested macaque, copyright over an adorable toothy snap he took on a camera belonging to photographer David John Slater, who last year revealed how the cost of the legal fees was ruining his life.

On Monday a US court of appeals finally ruled against Naruto, bringing the sorry case to an end.

What a pointless, expensive waste of time for everyone.