With nearly 11 million mentions on the internet, the hat that Princess Beatrice wore to her cousin’s wedding has taken on a life of its own.

It has been photoshopped a thousand times (most memorably on to the Killing Bin Laden images at the White House).

Variously described ‘the toilet seat’ and a ‘deranged pretzel’ the despised titfer redeemed itself by raising £81,000 for children’s charities when Beatrice wisely placed it on eBay.

Michael Jackson Statue: What’s wrong with putting up a statue to a dear, departed friend? Plenty, if your name is Mohamed Al-Fayed and the statue looks like the one he erected outside his beloved Craven Cottage football ground. Fans dubbed it tacky and predicted it would make Fulham FC a laughing stock but Al-Fayed hit back.

‘If some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift they can go to hell,’ he said, predicting that ‘People will queue to come and visit it from all over the UK.’ Possibly. But only if they are in need of a good laugh.

The iMax Cinema: Conceived in the white heat of a Bournemouth council meeting, the structure quickly gained fame as Britain’s second most hated building.

The edifice most usually prefixed with the words ‘the hated’ started life as a cunning plan to entice more tourists to this beautiful resort.

Because it actually obscured some of the town’s finest views it finally got its come-uppance in 2010,when the council decided to get rid of it although now they are planning to chop a bit off and re-purpose the rest for recreation.

The Millennium Dome: It was big, some said it was ugly, it went horribly over budget but it was the only structure in the UK big enough to house the combined egos of its most passionate enthusiasts; Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and John Prescott.

It contained an assortment of ‘attractions’ and gew-gaws which were mainly famous for not attracting enough visitors.

Tony Blair described it as a ‘triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity’. And, given the fact that it took ages before the O2 took it over, of hope over experience, too.

The Boscombe Fountain: (Parts I and II). To commission one detested public fountain at a cost rumoured to be over £100,000 may be unfortunate. To commission two looks like carelessness in the extreme.

But that’s what happened in Boscombe during the late 1980s when someone decided it would be really great to liven up the shopping precinct there with a circle of graded concrete blocks with a dribble of water in the middle.

It was dubbed ‘Stonehenge’ , which was rather insulting to that venerable monument and also a ‘urinal’, which is what many night-time revellers mistook it for.

It was eventually replaced with a more traditional number which was also used for the relief of the caught-short, and that was given the axe in 2010, one of the main complaints being that most people had never seen it work.

The council proposed to replace it with a bike rack.

The Diana Memorial Fountain: What is it with this country and fountains? Evidently the committee of the great and the good who oversaw this venture saw nothing wrong with remembering the People’s Princess with an open waterway whose stonework became dangerously slimy with algae and a hazard to the little children who wanted to play in it. Unpopular, dreary and surrounded by drips, perhaps its supporters were thinking of another royal personage?

Skylon: With the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain taking place, the nation’s designers are having a Skylon moment. Which is amazing, really, because the cigar-shaped thingy that so wowed the folk who visited the South Bank exhibition all those years ago was really a bit pants.

What was it for? What did it do? What was the point, you may have asked. Well, it was this. Skylon proves that if a despised object or construction stays around long enough, or is eulogised well enough, it will find itself a national icon and treasure.