It's a shame that the Duke of Edinburgh has denied that he called Simon Cowell a ‘scrounger', even though he did it with the rather elegant put-down that ‘he does not know enough about Mr Cowell to make any sort of comment about him'.

I can think of a lot worse things to call him - camp old roué, bitchy millionaire pantomime dame, cruel and cynical exploiter of the young and naïve - and I'm sure that if HRH the D of E did know who he was he'd come up with even better ones. Still, it's been a nice little publicity stunt for Cowell.

However I'm sure that someone would be quick to point out that he has pretty much single-handedly reinvigorated the light entertainment genre and has helped re-establish ITV's Saturday night line-up (albeit at a massive financial cost) to a pre-eminence not seen since the early 90s, thereby providing some much-needed cheer to an otherwise bleak schedule.

And the schedule is about to get bleaker still - this weekend marks the last time that ITV will transmit the Boat Race as well as the first Formula One race on the BBC since ITV handed back the rights because of cost.

With ITV's sports coverage now solely focussed on a ragbag of football rights, as well as cuts to drama and daytime commissions, there's a danger that, light entertainment aside, the network is beginning to look almost indistinguishable from those UKTV satellite repeat channels that keep being re-branded with increasingly ridiculous names.

Without Cowell, ITV might want to consider UKTV's example and re-brand as ‘Threadbare'; ‘Scrounger' would best be saved for Channel 4.