Is Duchess Kate keeping a secret like Princess Diana?

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (Photo by Getty Images)

Published Sunday, July 21, 2013

By Staff/AFP

Back in 1982, Princess Diana fooled the press by announcing the heir to the throne was due on July 1. But Prince William was actually born ten days earlier on June 21.

Click here for LIVE streaming from outside Kate's Hospital

If Kate and William have decided to follow his mother's lead, the true expected due date of their first child will be July 3.

The royal baby isn't expected to arrive for another three weeks according to the officially announced due date.

The Daily Telegraph reported that 'the Duchess may be due earlier than the July 13 date announced by Buckingham Palace but have kept the true date a secret, much like Princess Diana.'

With the intense press speculation and public interest surrounding the birth, the couple couldn't be blamed for maintaining a shred of privacy by misleading people on the official due date.

Of course, the due date is only ever an estimation of when a baby will arrive. The Duchess will not be having caesarian, nobody will be able to predict when her labour will begin naturally.

Britain waits and waits for new heir

From royal baby name generators to interminably dull live-feeds of a hospital door -- the longer Britain waits for Prince William’s wife Catherine to give birth, the more nonsense the Internet provides.

Bored web users can while away hours creating ghastly photomontages of what the little heir will look like -- taking Kate’s hair, for example, adding William’s nose and the ears of grandfather Prince Charles.

Elsewhere, a slew of royal baby name generators offer the chance to create an unlikely monicker for the newborn.

With the world's media camped outside Kate’s London hospital in preparation for the birth, several broadcasters are now offering riveting dawn-to-dusk online coverage of the “Great Kate Wait”.

Savvy advertisers, meanwhile, have also jumped on the royal baby bandwagon.

One bookmaker -- taking bets on everything from the future monarch’s name to its possible hair colour -- dressed four men as grotesque “adult babies” and sent them onto London’s underground train network, where they drew shudders from commuters.

As the first royal baby born into the social media era, there is of course a daily avalanche of tweets on its impending arrival -- including several accounts dedicated to royal baby news, or indeed the lack of it.

Rumours that Kate may have gone into labour cause regular flurries of excitement on Twitter, but all have proved to be false alarms so far.

Other Twitter users have expressed sympathy for the royal mother-to-be, remarking that the huge bank of cameras outside the hospital must make her feel like a panda giving birth at a zoo.

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Is Duchess Kate keeping a secret like Princess Diana?