Daily Express readers up and down the country have welcomed the news of Duchess of Sussex’s pregnancy by crossing all of their fingers and hoping to God that the baby is a ginger.

The announcement comes as Meghan, 37, and her husband, Prince Harry, 34, begin a 16-day tour of Australasia and it was met with a mixture of joy and trepidation by Royal watchers.? 

“Well, obviously, I’m delighted for them,” said Express reader Hilda Smythe, 72, “but you know, with Meghan being a, well, with her being, you know, I just hope that the baby isn’t also, you know, one of them.? 

“A redheaded baby would be lovely though. Yes, I can picture it now, with its lovely pale white skin, just like its father, nice and white and pale and British.”

The baby, which is due to be born in the Spring of 2019, will be the couple’s first child and will find itself seventh in line to the throne, a fact that many readers found unsettling.

“Now I’m not a racist,” said reader Tom Humphries, 65, “but that’s just too close for comfort. I mean, it’s not that I have anything against the, er, people of that particular, you know, but I happen to believe that a British monarch should be, well, should look like their father and definitely not their mother.

“Even if it means that they’re ginger.”

However, other readers were less subtle when expressing their concerns.

“I’m not being funny, but you can’t fit a crown over an afro,” said Imelda Simmons, 43.

“Philip at least had the decency to have Princess Diana murdered – God rest her soul – before she had the chance to be knocked up by that Muslim bloke, so I don’t understand why he’s not stepped in to stop Harry and Muckle firing out their brown babies.

“We’ll just have to take comfort in knowing that the ginger genes are strong in the Hewitt line.”? 

Speculation that the Duchess might be expecting has been rife ever since she was pictured at Princess Eugenie’s wedding wearing a long, dark blue coat, which many online critics described as uncharacteristically modest for “that cheap Yank hussy.” Bookmakers have already started taking bets on the baby’s name, though MailOnline readers have already said that they don’t care what it’s called, as long as it’s not given a British passport.

Regardless, messages of congratulations have continued to flood in from across the globe, with many seeing the news as a welcome distraction from negative news about Brexit and the struggling economy.

One Downing Street insider told the Herald that the Prime Minister “jumped for joy” when she heard that it was likely to be a spring baby, though they denied reports that she had asked for the birth to be brought forward to the 29th March 2019, in the hope that people will be too busy cooing over the Royal baby to notice that their own children are dying due to the lack of doctors and medicine post-Brexit.