What a strange feeling. For the first time in 14 years, I find myself on the sidelines as yet another royal storm rages - and this one's a corker. My old mate Paul Burrell has spilled the beans. Surely I should be shivering outside Buckingham Palace, spouting forth to Breakfast News? But here I am, enjoying a mug of steaming coffee in our beautiful new house in Devon. I'm not even dressed yet.
I step out on to our decking and gaze at the sea shimmering in the early autumn sunshine, and I rejoice in the knowledge that I am truly off my choke chain. The monarchy's near meltdown - and I don't have to give a damn.
My husband's already taken our daughter, Emma, to school. He returns with his Independent - and chucks the Daily Mail at me. He hates having it in the house, but it's good on royal stories and I can't break the habit. Page 11, though, turns out to be a bit of a shocker. "Her Royal Haughtiness!" screams the headline. And there, beside it, is a huge picture of someone who looks alarmingly like me - complete with mock crown. I scan the text and discover that it's another "old mate", Dickie Arbiter (or Arsebiter, as he's known), who is singing for his supper. And they've told him to have a go at me.
A former royal correspondent himself, Dickie turned gamekeeper for a while and worked in the palace press office. These days they beg us not to use him as a commentator because they say he doesn't know anything. Always hopelessly over-exuberant, he reportedly once got so excited in his radio days that - faced with a breaking news story - he rushed into the studio and announced breathlessly: "I'm an oil tanker. Dickie Arbiter has just sunk in the North Sea."
His diatribe against me, I find, is based on a piece of nonsense: a local news agency report quoting me (wrongly) as saying I didn't like the royal family. What I actually said was that I didn't really know them. I decide to ring him. "Hello, Dickie. It's Jennie here - just read the Mail. I do hope you got a good rate for it."
"Oh . . . yes. Hello." He sounds suitably sheepish. I enjoy listening to him squirm as I ask why he didn't trouble to pick up the phone to check the basic facts before launching into a character assassination.
As the week progresses, the Burrell row threatens to consume all in its path. I have only a couple of after-dinner speeches this week, so am at liberty to sit down with a glass of Sauvignon and watch the Ten O'Clock News. Joy of joys - Nicholas Witchell is standing in front of the palace, looking decidedly pissed off. It's probably his third stint down there in between frantic edits and deadlines. I pour myself another glass.
The next morning's headlines really are shocking. "Diana's Nine Suitors . . . " Burrell is teasing us now with titbits from the princess's love life. Didn't he once assure me that other people might have their price but he would never tell? Well, things have changed and, however tacky it looks, I can't really blame him. You reap what you sow - and the royal family should have shown Paul more concern and consideration.
As I head to London for talks about a big TV project, the phone rings incessantly. Suddenly I'm not on the sidelines any more. Everyone wants to hear my views on the Burrell revelations. Between meetings, I squeeze in an interview with French TV.
By five, I'm on my way to Cambridge to address 400 members of the Women's Institute. Irish Radio calls me en route and I manage to stop at a petrol station just in time to go live on their evening show. Then, just before going on stage at 7.30pm, Radio New Zealand persuades me to do a quick "Burrell hit" on their early-morning show. How bizarre it is to stand in the dark undergrowth of a Cambridge college (seeking a decent mobile signal) in glittery top and with a glass of wine, waxing analytical to folk on the other side of the world. The Burrell bandwagon knows no bounds.
It's fun to be broadcasting again. But it's even better to go home to the still-novel indulgence of switching off my pager and my phone. Roll on the next royal crisis . . .
Jennie Bond recently quit as the BBC's royal correspondent - and is currently enjoying pastures new
