Last week was Valentine’s Day – you may have missed it, subtle as it is – and to mark the occasion, William and Catherine (you know the ones) won the accolade of most romantic couple.

The award was the result of a survey conducted by those virtuosos of romance, netvouchercodes.co.uk. And the reason the Royals won, besides the fact that netvouchers.co.uk needed a PR stunt for Valentines? They won because… well, actually, nobody gave a reason, I guess because nobody gives a damn.

The Royals fought off stiff competition from the likes of Angelina and Brad – who were too busy fighting over the Tux they both intended to wear to the Baftas this week – and Jay-Z and Beyonce, who were probably fighting over how dreamy the President is, following those recent Beyonce/Obama affair allegations.

So our Royal darlings won – a couple who met at university, and faced the terribly difficult years of student life together. You remember those days of student-hood where you couldn’t really afford milk, let alone a new pair of Louboutins. Where your shared house came complete with mould on the ceiling and dubious stains on the fourth-hand mattress.

Because, as they are keen to point out at every Waitrose car park photo opportunity, William and Kate are just like the rest of us. Which must mean their shared house was just like the ones I’ve experienced in Oxford. I bet those daily struggles put terrible strain on their nascent relationship: to withstand all that they must truly know romance.

Ok, so I actually like The Royal Couple but I also don’t believe we can know at all who is or isn’t the most romantic couple in the world: a famous engagement ring and a few tight-fisted smiles do not a romance make.

But is this what romance is: how loved-up you can look in a photograph or how much you can prove you’re adored via a Facebook status?

I know that for many people, their frame of reference is a choice between the celebrity couple littering every newsstand or the shenanigans of the locals in the Queen Vic. However, the majority of romance we encounter via media hinges on where a celeb couple went to dinner (clue: somewhere over priced and with guaranteed photographers outside), or a twitter update spewing hashtags like #crazyinlove which – as everybody now knows – was Beyonce’s prophetic song for Obama.

Isn’t it a little creepy when a celebrity couple tweet their love for one another, when you know they could just as easily turn to one another in their oversized hot tub and say it without the whole world watching. But that’s the point, isn’t it? It ain’t love if nobody’s watching. Heaven forbid you lack a bunch of flowers to snap and upload on Valentine’s.

Even though the sender could be anyone ranging from a devoted lover, to a psychotic stalker and everything in between, including a half-hearted Casanova with a stakehold in Interflora.

For me, romance has always been an action rather than a display and usually a cheap one at that. I was raised on films like Lady and the Tramp – Tramp didn’t have much to give: a few leftover meatballs nuzzled to my side of the plate, perhaps – but that rogue sure knew how to show a gal an exciting time.