NEVER has so much 'colour' been written about one squaddie doing his job.

Flicking through one tabloid's ten pages of coverage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan, the intros start "Beside a comrade in the turret of a Spartan armoured vehicle", "Crouching behind sandbags, a box of ammunition by his side", and "In war-torn Helmand Province, Prince Harry smiles and says...."

Presumably not smiling because Helmand Province is war-torn. Perhaps it was merely wind.

More flowery nonsense follows..."far from the comforts of home" and "peering through the sandbags".

I'm picking on one newspaper, but they were all the same.

How to spin a story out so much you can see daylight through it is something of an art form for these writers.

And broadcasters were just as bad - a specially-extended BBC Ten O'Clock News used to be the preserve of major terrorist attacks and members of Harry's family dying.

Now, we have acres of airtime and print showing one young man in combats. A great PR coup for the royals.

Yet on a regular basis, British soldiers who give their lives in Afghanistan are hard-pressed to get a page in these same newspapers.

And our story on Friday about a Chepstow soldier who cannot get psychological treatment for post traumatic stress disorder showed that those left mentally-scarred by war really are the forgotten victims.

What does all of this say about our country?

Given free rein to speak his mind, Prince Harry would probably be among the first people to say his colleagues deserve better, and scratch his head at the media circus surrounding him.

But I can't help but wonder how much public money was spent on Press junkets to photograph him clutching a machine gun while there are expected to be more than 1,000 former servicemen and women who cannot get respite at Combat Stress's three centres this year because they only have 90 places.

It's time this country got its priorities straight.

I LOVE the fact top curry chef Sanjay Sigat has had his tastebuds insured for £1 million.

Sanjay works for the Authentic Food Company - and his tasetbuds are apparently insured for the same amount as Rolling Stone Keith Richards has insured his hands.

Now, apart from the fact I want my chocolate-aficionado tastebuds insured to the same level, I would have thought that with his rock and roll history, Mr Richards' hands have been the least of his insurance risks.

AND finally...

SO a group of architects want to list Bettws High School as a good example of a 'brutalist' building, and save it from demolition.

Cue widespread and understandable derision.

How dare Newport council have plans to replace it with a new, welcoming building which will not look luke a gulag.

I suspect there will be no mock funeral to mourn its passing as there was for Blaenavon leisure centre.