RACHEL JOHNSON: If you must abandon the missus, Wills, do it for a proper holiday  

I’m not judging them, our two noble lions who have left pride and wives and young to go on the prowl on their own in their prime. Not for a second. Listen, if I were Prince William or David Cameron, and had seen the weather forecast for the long Easter weekend – heavy rain Maundy Thursday, scattered showers and sunny spells Good Friday, rain Saturday, heavy rain Easter Sunday, severe weather warning Bank Holiday Monday – I’d have said ‘Sod this’ and done a solo bunk too.

Not to mention the predicted travel chaos. When it comes to getting from West London to Exmoor for Easter, my personal best (worst) is 11 hours in traffic.

This year, I booked my sons seats on the 19.03 Paddington to Tiverton service on Maundy Thursday, and they weren’t even allowed to board as Great Western Railway staff said the train was so overcrowded.

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I can just imagine William wheedling to a boot-faced Kate (pictured together left), ‘Look, hun, Jecca’s one of my oldest friends… Now don’t give me that look! It’ll be total non-speaks if I blow her out,’ then digging out some of his African beaded bangles, and jetting off to his first love’s Happy Valley nuptials. Jecca Craig is pictured (right)

So yes, I can just imagine William wheedling to a boot-faced Kate, ‘Look, hun, Jecca’s one of my oldest friends… Now don’t give me that look! It’ll be total non-speaks if I blow her out,’ then digging out some of his African beaded bangles, and jetting off to his first love’s Happy Valley nuptials in Kenya, while ‘the missus’ (as he calls her) stays behind painting boiled eggs with the nippers in the Aga kitchen in Norfolk because it’s too wet to go outside.

As for David Cameron, we know what he said to his pride before hopping on an easyJet flight to Lanzarote before his own family arrived a couple of days later: he told MPs that the super-fast news cycle was fatiguing and he needed ‘more time to think’.

I have no idea how Jecca’s wedding went. It was in Kenya. Invited guests are more discreet than random tourists. But when it comes to the PM, his mission to decompress and ‘gather’ generally has not quite gone to plan as – like you – I feel as if I could be in Playa Blanca with him.

A fellow guest tweeted a picture of Dave bearing a plate mounded from the smorgasbord, wearing an all-inclusive wristband, with the plaintive question: ‘Why is David Cameron in my hotel?’

When it comes to the PM, his mission to decompress and ‘gather’ generally has not quite gone to plan as – like you – I feel as if I could be in Playa Blanca with him. David Cameron is pictured with his wife Samantha during their holiday earlier this week 

A Scottish rugby star is posting such regular updates on the PM’s movements – bantz about the weather, yoga sessions, paella lunches, all the selfies guests are demanding – that soon no doubt we will know within seconds when the PM withdraws with iPad for his morning ablutions.

All this makes me feel a bit sorry for him, but honestly – if you’re going to disappear on your tod, you don’t go to a five-star resort in Lanzarote and do sun salutations by the pool.

I am the wife of a man who discovered he was a passionate fly-fisherman and golfer when our three children were at a demanding age (ie birth to 12), and the daughter of an environmentalist – and let me assure you: compared to accomplished male ‘escape artists’, Cameron and the Prince are rank amateurs.

My father would sometimes disappear up the Amazon to live with lost tribes for months at a time when we were small children. When my half-sister was two, he joined a British Antarctic Survey trip and was completely out of radio contact with my stepmother for six weeks apart from one communication – a postcard sent from Port Stanley, saying: ‘Love Stanley in Stanley.’

I don’t begrudge either Prince William or the Prime Minister their determination to carve out downtime, or me-time. Both have high-pressure jobs – OK, one does. We all need time to stand and stare and so on. So don’t let’s make an unholy row of their Holy Week exeats.

But both are such lightweights when it comes to their own little getaways to the sun that they might as well have stayed at home in the UK, racking up credits with their wives, eating chocolate eggs in the rain like the rest of us.

Prince Harry is very gallant to stay on in Nepal to help rebuild a school, and to speak up for girls so movingly, but I have to ask: how long is his endless gap year going to last? 

THE FISHLOVE CAMPAIGN AND WHETHER IT SHOULD CONTINUE... 

The Fishlove campaign makes for great pictures, including this one of Emma Thompson and Greg Wise, and I commend all who highlight overfishing. But I do think these endless hairy, slimy, fleshy photoshoots of scaly celebrities - I mean fish - have delighted us for long enough

Gelato... the latest medical breakthrough

Medical Bulletin: Men with prostate cancer can have abiraterone on the NHS before chemo following a NICE ruling. 

In Italy they have a natural wonder drug for the disease, as I learned last week when a hotel owner in the Dolomites presented the two 50-plus males in our party with complimentary puddings: vanilla ice cream laced with sunflower seeds and oil. 

‘For the men,’ he explained, making a pumping gesture with a fist. ‘For the prostata.’ I Googled it. ‘Researchers have discovered that eating sunflower seeds could be the best way to fight prostate cancer,’ I read on a medical website. ‘They found that a tiny protein in sunflower seeds may stop prostate cancer tumours spreading to the bone.’ I’m happy to pass on this tip to my few remaining male readers.

In Italy they have a natural wonder drug for the disease, as I learned last week when a hotel owner in the Dolomites presented the two 50-plus males in our party with complimentary puddings: vanilla ice cream laced with sunflower seeds and oil

A super-rich financier called Peter Hargreaves is splashing the cash on a mass mailshot to urge us all to vote Leave in the Euro referendum. Annoying on two levels. One, his argument, as stated on BBC Radio 4 – that the UK should trade with the Commonwealth, not the EU, as they speak English – was too daft for words. Two, all my puny savings are in the hands of the firm he founded, Hargreaves Lansdown. All this makes me worry Mr Hargreaves is a dim bulb indeed. I am tempted to liquidate my sterling holdings – and put them into euros.

It was a big deal, apparently, that Zara competed for the first time under her married name Tindall at Lincolnshire Showground last week. But why? The whole business of marriage remains feminism-unfriendly. You either take the name of your husband or you keep the name of your father. Women are under the lash of the patriarchy either way. As Rachel ‘Son of John’, I rest my case. 

PS. Sweetest snippet of last week: To Prince George, Her Majesty the Queen is ‘Gan-Gan’. My children called their great-grandmother ‘GaGa’, which maybe wouldn’t work so well in the Royal Household.

QUOTES OF THE WEEK 

‘If I was a lady player, I’d go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born because they have carried this sport.’

Raymond Moore, boss of the Indian Wells tournament, sparks controversy by claiming the women’s tour rides on the coat-tails of the men’s game.

‘Chill, I’m a nice person. I just hate everybody.’

Tay, a Holocaust-denying, feminist-hating artificial intelligence chatbot, which Microsoft was forced to shut down after it sent a series of offensive tweets.

'My bum could break my back, it's so enormous:' Singer Adele after she inadvertently twerked on stage at London's O2 Arena

'My bum could break my back, it's so enormous.' 

Singer Adele after she inadvertently twerked on stage at London's O2 Arena.  

‘Men need to play the field and spread their seed, whereas women don’t have that same biological urge.’

Veteran actor Edward Fox claims men are born to be unfaithful.

Sportswriter David Miller’s description of legendary Dutch footballer Johan Cruyff (pictured) – known for his precision and athleticism – who died last week aged 68

‘Clueless, spineless, charmless, gutless, brainless, pointless.’

Broadcaster Martin Kelner’s, description of BBC management who axed him from Radio Leeds after 30 years at the station.

‘I confronted a Muslim women [sic] yesterday in Croydon. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said “Nothing to do with me”. A mealy mouthed reply.’

Matthew Doyle comes under fire for his tweet following the Brussels terror attacks.

‘Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.’

Comic Jerry Seinfeld’s take on relationships.

‘It means that at the moment I am not alone. Somewhere on a hill facing the sea there is a very beautiful ancient stone and it’s not going anywhere. It will be there, waiting for me.’

Artist Tracey Emin announces that she has married a rock.

‘Pythagoras in boots.’

Sportswriter David Miller’s description of legendary Dutch footballer Johan Cruyff – known for his precision and athleticism – who died last week aged 68.