Only Kate and Wills look good on video calls | BBC Radio Solent's Alun Newman

Eating posh food, going to award ceremonies, appearing in magazine articles talking about how everything is always great.

If lockdown has shown us one important detail, it’s that no matter how much money you have, when your freedom is clipped, you’re the same as the rest of us, except with a bigger garden and a pool.

Plus, whether you’re wealthy, famous, or just an average member of the general public, we all look bad on video calls. Whatever the system being used, everyone looks old. The key to looking like you might be your age is lighting.

Shadows mean age. The ideal solution is to bounce light off another surface before it hits your face.

It looks better and cuts down the squinting.

The only people this rule doesn’t apply to, who still look fresh-faced, together and have some skin colour, are Prince William and Kate.

They’ve managed to achieve the impossible.

My son had a bit of a meltdown this week.

He claimed that he felt like he was trapped in hell.

I pointed out that he wasn’t trapped (he was but that’s what parents do rather than just listen).

I reminded him that we had been for our legal walk around the block, we were hardly trapped.

That was going out.

He said it was nothing more than a walk around the prison yard, it was not an indication of freedom.

I continued to boycott good parental listening and assured him that we would be in a much tougher state if we lived in a tower block and there were five of us in a one-bedroom flat.

Before he walked off he advised – a polite word for it – that due to social care restrictions that situation was unlikely and it also didn’t in any way help his emotional state.

My daughter is coping better. Although she did say yesterday that if I went on any more about getting some exercise she would stop talking to me for the remaining part of the lockdown.

That aside, all is going well.

I spoke recently with my dad and quizzed him as to which of us has managed to drag out the most mundane job.

I had seen that JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author, got so bored that she’s put all her books in colour-coded order.

You see, no matter how much money and fame, the universal removal of freedom is a great leveller.

We had a guest on the radio show who’s a fabulous chef, Des Burke.

He trained with the greats including the legendary Roux brothers.

I asked him what he’s up to and he said that he'd been to the shed and retrieved his fly fishing lures and had categorised them all into relevant groups, size and colour.

The mundane was keeping him sane.

So, my dad had managed a few gardening jobs but was bringing little to the party.

I threw in that I had size-ordered and jam-jarred my random screw collection.

However, he scored the winner when he revealed his neighbour and friend had managed to spend over an hour jet-washing and cleaning his wheelie bins.

My dad thought it was hilarious that anyone would be so desperate to do something that they’d spend so long cleaning a bin.

We laughed and talked about when all this would be over. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I did my bins two weeks ago.

When mum stuck the boot in

This year sees the 60th anniversary of the Dr Martens boot.

I craved a pair of DMs as a child. The chunky, air-cushioned sole, the yellow stitching.

I wanted the eight- hole version. Nothing too fancy, I was no punk.

The cool kids had them at school and I wanted in. I had banged on and on like children do and had arranged to meet my mum at the shops on Saturday.

I went down in advance on the bus as I saw no need to travel together. We had to meet because she was bankrolling the shoe purchase.

She insisted that we went to Clarks first for a fitting and we’d make a decision from there. I was doomed.

The assistant claimed I had an unusually wide foot but fortunately they catered for feet like mine in their shoes.

The assistant explained that any other shoe would either end in certain death or, at the very least, club foot or an amputation. My mum was hooked. My plan was scuppered.

This anniversary has brought back painful memories. Those black beetle crushers did me no favours at school. I did eventually get some DMs but only when I had a job and paid for them myself!

It's almost as if it was all part of some grand conspiracy to force me to take responsibility. Unfair.

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