A CRUELLA of a Camilla, a gypsy Kate Middleton and a raffish Prince Harry who can’t read or write are coming to our television screens this week in a new comedy that promises to be right royal hit.

The Channel 4 spoof The Windsors will pair Horsham-born comedy legend Harry Enfield with Eastbourne College alumnus Hugh Skinner in father and son roles as Princes Charles and William, in a satire described by its creators as a “Dynasty” inspired take on the royal family.

Written by George Jeffrie and Bert Tyler Moore, the six-part series is an exaggerated send-up of the lives of the royals, where the Duchess Of Cambridge is not just “a commoner” but a gypsy, and Prince William is an action hero in the vein of Tom Cruise.

"It's the real-life Windsors but done as if they're in something like Dynasty or Dallas," explains Tyler Moore. "It's a heightened and very silly parody version of reality."

Other caricatures include a Duchess of Cornwall so hell-bent on becoming Queen that her performance is pure pantomime villain, who stresses that if William ascends to the throne, “talking to Joe Pasquale at the Royal Variety Show will all be for nothing”.

In preparation for playing Prince William, 31-year-old Skinner, who plays another Will in W1A and was also in the 2012 big-screen version of Les Miserables, considered having his hair thinned out.

He said: “I was up for all of it, but ultimately, they decided that because we look so different - he's quite built and stacked and I'm not - they thought to play it like a hero, and maybe the gulf between the two of us would be more interesting.

"At one point, I thought about having marbles in my cheeks, you know, like Marlon Brando, but I just learnt the lines in the end."

Richard Goulding, who plays Prince Harry as "the party royal; the drinker and the kind of idiot”, reassured die-hard royalists that the Queen herself escapes most of the lampooning.

He said: “The Queen is so straight-laced and well-behaved and brilliant at being the Queen that there's not much comedy value in that, whereas Philip puts himself in the limelight all the time, so there's some comedy gold in there."

The Windsors will be broadcast on Friday at 10pm on Channel Four.