Don't wait until life's credits start to roll

SOMETIMES - though not very often — life turns out exactly like a Hallmark movie and the “ordinary”, down-to-earth divorced actress/influencer marries a royal prince. She shares giggles and a gig with Queen Elizabeth II.

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She’s handed the keys to fairy-tale, 10 bedroom, Frogmore Cottage and spends £2.4million on renovations, turning it into a five-bedroom pad with two orangeries and a yoga studio. She gives birth to a son, spurns the hostile land of her prince’s birth, relocates to marvellous Montecito, pops out a daughter and morphs into a jam-flogger. Cue schmaltzy music and fade to closing credits.

Sometimes — more frequently - life turns out like a soggy soap subplot. Our heroine’s 81-year-old estranged father, in exile in the Philippines, is rushed to hospital and has one leg amputated below the knee.