Our Fascination With Diana Reaches New Heights The Princess Of Wales Is Still An Instant Ratings Boost - But Her Life’s ‘Role’ Has Yet To Be Defined

We seem to have answered one of the major questions of our age: How do we make people keep watching network television?

The answer: Give them non-stop Princess Di, chattering on and on, and on and on and on, about her bulimia, her sleeping around, her work (whatever that is) and how beastly everyone is being to her.

In Britain, a phenomenal 21 million Brits tuned in to the recent televised interview with the princess on the BBC. In America, something like 15 million Americans tuned in to ABC for the rerun of the interview. This is a much smaller share of America’s viewing public, but then, the U.S. version had Barbara Walters interrupting things all the time, and most Americans already knew all about that bulimia and sleeping around stuff from reading, or having read to them, People magazine’s weekly Royal Watch articles.

I was profoundly struck by several things: The princess appears to have taken all her instruction on eyeliner application from excessive viewing of Charles Addams cartoons. For an assistant kindergarten teacher (her position before her marriage), she is remarkably articulate, and can actually speak in complete sentences, unlike our own movie actress queens.

I’ve had conversations with a number of royal personages over the years - the Princess Chantal of France, Queen Sonja of Norway, Queen Noor of Jordan, even Queen Elizabeth II Herself of Great Britain and never once did the subjects of bulimia and sleeping around come up.

And none of them complained about anything, not even Queen Noor, whose husband packs heat because of all the attempts on their lives.

If Britain really insists on having a princess, why doesn’t it dump the troubled and irked Di and sign up Darcey Bussell, prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet. She got the princess thing down perfectly in “Swan Lake” and is genuinely beautiful, sweet, well mannered, intelligent, cultured, gracious and has an actual talent with which to amuse everyone.

Imagine gallumphing Di or well-fed Fergie doing a pas de deux.

But Di’s interview left unanswered two other major questions of our age: Just what the hell is Di’s “work”? And, she says she has “a role to play”? Whatever could it be? Mistress Quickly in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”?

The answer to the first question, based on my following her around for several days watching her doing it, is that Di’s work amounts to: Going about the world greeting strange heads of states in silly hats while wearing no stockings and too much eyeliner; meeting with people dying of horrible diseases and telling them she’s concerned about them and that she loves them; flirting with American CEOs at black-tie dinners for British charities the toffs back home are too stingy to support; and keeping photographers employed by bending over a lot while getting out of limos at galas in very low cut gowns.

As for her “role,” does she mean hanging on to her royal marriage just so she can have a better car and flat than she did as an assistant kindergarten teacher? Or does she truly wish to serve the Realm in the same noble and meaningful ways the British Royal Family has over the ages?

If the latter be true, I might suggest she try something from the following list of traditional noble and meaningful Royal Family roles:

Selling cars. Her cousin-in-law Princess Alexandra and sister-in-law Princess Anne have both trooped over to the U.S. to hawk Range Rovers and the new Land Rover Discovery - the former a mainstay of Beverly Hills life and the latter a hot item with suburban status seekers, largely because of them. Di ought to be at least as good as those ladies they have on those revolving platforms at auto shows, especially leaning over to point to the hubcaps in those evening gowns she wears.

Selling Burger King burgers. Did you know Burger King is owned by the British?

Finding the Irish Republican Army arms cache. The British say they won’t let the Northern Ireland peace talks resume with the IRA at the table unless the IRA turns over its hidden arms cache. The IRA refuses to do this. The British Home Secretary said over lunch the other day that the IRA arms cache is actually hidden not in Northern Ireland, but in the Irish Republic, even though the IRA is outlawed there. Di could go on holiday in Ireland, and, while picnicking, go off and find the IRA arms cache, and bring peace to the Irish island - or at least, more negotiations.

How about doing cosmetics commercials and becoming the Cindy Crawford of Britain. Given the amount of eyeliner she wears, she’d probably move twice the product.