What is it about these female Royals that they can't keep their tops on? Princess Diana was photographed topless on a yacht; Sarah, Duchess of York has been snapped topless and sucking a toe; Prince Edward's wife, Sophie (Duchess of Wessex) has been immortalized topless. And now Kate. Diana topless wasn't much of a deal, as she was something of a loose cannon. Kate is different. She and Prince William are a fairy tale couple.

Though he's passed away, the writer Ron Lawrence was responsible for one of the more exotic incidents in my career in journalism. After the war he'd acquired a large amount of British pounds that he'd wrapped in tinfoil and hidden under the floorboards of a room where he was lodged in Gibraltar. Years later, he asked me to go back and get it for him.

Over the past 40 years it has become something of an institution in Toronto -- beloved by some, despised by others, but always competitive, periodically incestuous, often irritatingly cheerful, occasionally naughty, and ever determined to be itself and to hell with what critics think.