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The Great Kate Wait is driving Britain bonkers.
A couple of pranksters posing as Prince William and Kate Middleton showed up yesterday outside the London hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge is expected to give birth — and created a frenzy among the army of media that have been encamped for nine days.
The look-alikes arrived in a Land Rover at St. Mary’s Hospital and for a moment captured the attention of dozens of cameras, royal watchers and sleep- deprived journalists.
But it soon became apparent that the duo, wearing T-shirts that read “The Sun — No. 1 for royal baby news,” were a London newspaper’s way of poking fun at the way the nation has become obsessed with the arrival of the third-in-line to the British throne.
Britons — and anglophiles around the world — spent another day watching streaming video from outside St Mary’s. Other highlights included five women in Kate masks posing on the hospital steps and the delivery of a present for the new baby, a toy car wrapped in a red, white and blue bow.
The Kate countdown was fueled when Buckingham Palace hinted that her delivery date was July 13.
That came and went, but yesterday the Telegraph newspaper cited a “well-placed source” as saying yesterday was the real due date.
When royal-protection officials were spotted leaving the Middleton family home in Bucklebury, where Kate has been spending some of the past weeks, the hubbub outside St. Mary’s soared.
But by nightfall in England, no royal heir was announced.