Thursday 9pm, Channel 4 

No one expected Prince Andrew to turn up at the Christmas Day service in Sandringham, but there he was on Sunday, bundled up in his fugitive overcoat, hanging at the back of the royal pack as they made their way to church.

Sheepish or shifty? How one interpreted his demeanour is very much dependent on how charitable you feel towards the disgraced prince. 

I have zero sympathy for the vainglorious buffoon, but allegations of sexual assault against a 17-year-old – however vehemently denied – do not make him a paedophile, legally or morally.

It might make him repugnant and sleazy and foolish and weak and guilty by association with a man like Jeffrey Epstein – but I think we have to be fair when considering the behaviour of a royal who gave a £12million settlement to a woman he says he cannot even remember meeting. Stuff happens. Or does it?

Certainly, the royal diehards who lined the route to the Church of St Mary Magdalene on Sunday seemed pleased enough to see him, although King Charles has all but banished his younger brother from public life.

Yet it is unlikely that the Duke of York would have been there without some kind of semi-official royal sanction.

And who is to deny a prodigal son – perhaps one who is even seeking repentance – the comfort to be had from a house of worship on one of the holiest days of the year?

Still, Prince Andrew remains the bleak midwinter in the Windsor calendar, the dead mouse in the royal punchbowl, the kipper sewn into the ermine ruff. What does the future hold for him now?

Shame and censure continue to cloud his tentative efforts towards some kind of civic rehabilitation and nothing seems left for him except widespread disdain and mockery. And there is certainly no shortage of the latter.

For at the end of another torrid year the fates have one more punishment in store for the late Queen’s favourite son. 

On Thursday night, Channel 4 will broadcast Prince Andrew: The Musical, billed as a satirical send-up of the royal black sheep. 

Interspersed with real-life footage of key events in Andrew’s life, the one-hour special begins with his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in 2019 and it is a fast slide into ignominy and humiliation from there. Cue the music! 

‘I can’t believe I said it, that thing about the sweat. Although you’d rather have a prince who’s dry than one who’s soaking wet,’ sings the prince in the show’s opening number I Nailed It.

Other songs include Will You Be My Ex-Wife?, Obey and, finally, You’re Always Going To Need An Andrew – which gives some idea of the distressingly pin-thin level of satire on offer. 

There is not even a mention of Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre, who is missing in musical action on the grounds of good taste, one presumes. 

Yet this lack of wildness and absence of royal jeopardy all make for a rather tepid show. Emma Sidi plays Maitlis and Jenny Bede is the Duchess of York. ‘Everyone knows I’ve got subtlety coming out of my amazing a**e,’ she sings in what is almost the worst line in the show. In any show you care to mention!

Reedy-voiced Munya Chawawa is not a success as Prince Charles. ‘Maybe that is why I am so dry, all I can do is become a stamp and die,’ he whine-sings.

Meanwhile, there are cameo roles for Harry Enfield as Tony Blair and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Baga Chipz, who turns Margaret Thatcher into a predictably ghastly gargoyle.

She’s not even relevant to Prince Andrew’s story, but no one connected with Channel 4 is ever going to resist a gratuitous Thatcher bash, right? Right.

However, the star of the show is the rather winning Kieran Hodgson, who not only wrote the musical but plays both old and young Prince Andrews as thickos lost in a fog of entitled befuddlement. No complaints from me there.

But don’t get excited. This musical lands no blows, barely has a decent tune to its name and is as trite as a meringue. Key moments are dealt out like spinning cards; Fergie, helicopters, toes, air miles, golf, daughters, Ghislaine, Epstein, disgrace, the end.

And while there is much that is bad – so very, very bad – in the Duke of York’s life, why waste time ridiculing the good elements? His military service, his paternal devotion and the admirable success of his post-divorce relationship with his ex-wife are all commendable, not laughable. But there is to be no clemency for Andrew, not now, perhaps not ever.

The musical is part of C4’s Truth and Dare: 40 Years of Pushing Boundaries season. 

Other programmes in the series have included a documentary about men with extra-large penises, the controversial comedian Frankie Boyle on 1,000 years of the British monarchy – uh-oh – and a documentary about an Afghan porn star. 

Penises and porn? This is the terrain that the shamed Duke of York must negotiate, this is the company that he now must keep.

According to the show’s producer Adam Reeve, doing a musical about him was Channel 4’s idea. I bet it was.

It seems to be open season on the House of Windsor, increasingly seen as figures of fun assailed by a new, casual brutality.

The C4 musical even conjures up a tampon joke to embarrass the King, while he and Prince Andrew are not the only royals to feature in seasonal entertainments. Oh yes they are. Oh no they’re not!

In Sir Ian McKellen’s smash hit Mother Goose panto, currently at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, a Camilla, Queen Consort character (Genevieve Nicole) plays castanets as she lies on the floor with her legs wide apart, yelling: ‘This’ll get the prince’s trust!’ 

Last year, Diana: The Musical opened and closed on Broadway; a rock-opera version of the former Princess of Wales’s life that purported to be ‘about a woman who chose to be fearless, and as a result became timeless’.

It was also shown on Netflix, and some of you might remember the horror of the lyrics – for many of them were not sublime, but a crime against rhyme for which someone should have done time.

‘Oh Harry, my ginger-haired son, you will be second to none,’ Diana sang at one point. Later she wanted to tell ‘the truth about Charles and his mistress Camilla – he’s a third rate Henry VIII and she’s Godzilla’.

It pains me to report that Prince Andrew: The Musical is little better. ‘I fought the Argies single-handed, give or take a fleet. Without my chopper and my joystick, we’d have faced defeat,’ sings Andrew.

However, there is a timely reminder that it was Peter Mandelson, supported by then prime minister Tony Blair, who made the prince a government-backed trade envoy in the first place.

Can you imagine such a ridiculous thing happening now? Perhaps it is all for the best that today we live in a very different era – a time when the age of deference is well and truly over and no one thinks twice about being uproariously rude to a Royal Family that cannot answer back

The last number in Prince Andrew: The Musical finds our eponymous hero in top hat and tails, high-kicking his way through a razzle-dazzle routine.

In the song, the princely character argues that he fulfils a strategic role as the Royal Family’s fall guy.

‘I was born to be the scapegoat of all our family’s shame. Members of the great unwashed demand a saint, but perfect is something we ain’t,’ he trills.

It is a risible conceit of course, but his final words are all too believable.

‘You haven’t heard the last of me yet,’ sings Prince Andrew as the curtain comes down. Ominous.