Meghan says she was bullied online every day for ten years and became the most trolled person ‘in the entire world’ while Harry says being a father affected his mental health so much that he was almost on the floor curled up in a foetal position because his wife grew life and he couldn’t.
What? Maybe he should have paid a bit more attention in biology class.
Now he’s going on about upgrading his children and downgrading his own father while presenting himself as an eternal casualty in the ongoing battle royale with himself.
Yesterday came the biggest bawl of all – I never wanted to be royal, he blubbed in Melbourne to an audience who had paid £350 each to hear his latest soggy woes.
Welcome to the Victim Tour, the Big Downer Down Under, in which two of the most privileged people on Earth traipse round Australia having a moan about their rotten luck.
Despite the disobliging headlines – ‘They Put Hyacinth Bucket To Shame,’ said The Australian, ‘Harry and Meghan want to use Australia as an ATM,’ said the Sydney Morning Herald – the Duke and Duchess of Sussex no doubt regard their visit as a great success. No one threw rotten tomatoes, there were none of the usual duchessy wardrobe malfunctions plus no fuddy-dud protocol to spoil the fun.
However, if this trip is a signpost to the future, the Royal Family must have been looking on in utter horror, their worst pearl-clutching fears imagined.
Centuries-old soft power is brazenly being used to boost hard commerce for personal gain. Not to mention being crushed and bruised at how pathetically low the Sussex bar is now set.
A Channel 10 TV deal for Meghan, paid-for appearances by Harry, unsold tickets for all their events and even each outfit priced on a shop-Meghan’s-tourdrobe website that details everything from her Wolford tights (£40) to her Rolla’s denim jeans (£155). Why yes, she does receive payment for each sale, thank you for asking.
Yet what else can Mickey & Minnie Mouse from Montecito do to stay relevant on the global stage? One can see their difficulty.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, meet people at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne on April 14
Their Netflix deal is gone. They are no longer the headliners they fondly imagine themselves to be and all goodwill has been spent. The Sussexes need to trade on a past they claim to despise to realise the lucrative future they deeply desire, while pretending to do nothing of the sort.
None of it makes any sense. If Harry truly does not want to be royal, why doesn’t he give up his titles? Of course, we all know the answer to that. Without his heritage he would be nothing, no one would be interested and even he grasps that.
So he pretends to have a republican heart while visiting this increasingly republican country, all the while desperately clinging on to the rump-end of the royal barge like a persistent, superglued, dim, ginger barnacle.
It is both unbearable and unsustainable. ‘I had my head in the sand for years and years,’ he said this week. Well, it had certainly disappeared up somewhere. All that is left for the talent-free Sussexes to do is rip open their matching hair shirts (His and Hers Gucci, £345) and bare their pain for public consumption.
For H&M Inc to be taken seriously there has to be an issue, a salient point, a demonstration of gravity and shared suffering to lend depth and purpose to this money-making, image-boosting, royal-in-all-but-name, privately-public cringe of a tour. Otherwise it just looks like the entire purpose of this four-day indulgence is that Call-Me-Meg got a TV gig as a guest judge on the Australian version of MasterChef – absolute ripper, mate! Quick, hurry. Book the flights, rustle up some sick kids for a photo op, hand me the jam tongs, I’m ready for my close up!
To be honest, I couldn’t love it more. This is delicious, beyond my wildest dreams. Meghan as a judge on an Australian cooking show is surely the best international appointment since Peter Mandelson was made ambassador to the United States. It’s even better than putting Little Miss Whoops in charge of the tightrope-walking team in the Clumsy Olympics.
Not to nitpick, but did anyone notice the weird way she was holding a spatula to serve frittata at the women’s shelter in Melbourne on Tuesday? Less of the MasterChef mastery and more like Hermione Granger pointing her magic wand at a troll. Just downright odd.
So I’m looking forward to our girl showing the tough, competent Oz contestants – the skills standard in the Australian MasterChef is much, much higher than in British version – how to make her TikTok-level one-pot pasta, chop bananas into a fruit rainbow and rustle up more ladybird sandwiches in a craft barn for some imaginary children.
Perhaps she’ll share her recipe for mulled water (I’m not even joking) and suggest sprinkling flower petals on to the complex botanical ganache that won last year’s competition.
On we go. The key event of this royal-non-royal tour is the Duchess of Sussex’s appearance at a weekend femfest called Her Best Life, held at the InterContinental hotel in Coogee. I can’t believe I’ve just typed that sentence.
Tickets are a preposterous £1,700 for a VIP experience including an ‘inspiring live conversation’ and selfie opportunity with Her UnHighness the Very Not Royal Meghan of all Wisdom herself.
Yes, I did briefly think about going. But decided against travelling halfway around the world to listen to Call-Me-Meg make a five-minute appearance to deliver the kind of live-laugh-love homily you can buy on an embroidered cushion, then pocketing the cash to swiftly move on to her next appointment with her husband.
Look, I have sympathy for all celebrities – especially women – who have to endure the trials of social media trolling. I have sympathy for Harry, bereaved of his mother when he was only 13. But people move on and heal. They are not the only couple who have had bad things happen to them.
And some might argue that the way the Sussexes have behaved since they got together has been the catalyst of much of the online dislike which they have endured – and they have been guilty of some plutonium-grade trolling themselves.
This includes calling the rest of the Royal Family racist in print and on television, accusing the Princess of Wales of making Meghan cry, condemning King Charles as a bad father and being critical of the Royal Household for failing to support them at suicidal moments.
Perhaps one day Harry and Meghan will learn that you can’t demand to be taken seriously, you have to earn it.
And what we have seen in Australia – a new brand of performative philanthropy with a cheesy side order of hot bubbling profit – is convincing nobody.
As they head back to California, to take more photographs of the backs of their children’s heads to post online, they might want to think about that.
In the meantime, we’re all in the foetal position at the horror of it all.
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, during their royal tour in Melbourne, Australia on April 14
Wherever they go in the world, whatever they are doing, be it on a private or public stage, the Sussexes always like to present a united front. But sometimes that front is too united.
Why does Meghan always cling to Harry like a lost limpet? It would be embarrassing for any sentient grown woman to behave in this manner, let alone a duchess. They have always held hands on semi-official and public occasions, a departure from typical royal etiquette. They didn’t much dare do it in front of the late Queen Elizabeth II, but isn’t it now getting – excuse the pun – out of hand? There were moments in Australia where Meghan’s grip on her husband looked less like affection and more like she was placing him under arrest.
A haunted prince with no purpose
Dressed in a respectful dark suit and wearing his service medals, Prince Harry laid a wreath at the Australian War Memorial this week.
As an ex-serviceman, he obviously means well. His heart is in the right place. Harry is a military veteran who served his country for ten years. Captain Wales of the Blues and Royals did two tours in Afghanistan and that is not nothing. That is indeed a very big something.
Yet what is this rather contrived and unofficial photo opportunity about?
Despite the good intentions, there is something so sad and lost about it all. I imagine unknown hands packing his medals into his suitcase for this zippedy-doo-dah of an Australian tour, which the prince has insisted is private and not public.
Yet here he is, behaving like some ghostly royal in exile, a prince without a purpose, for the benefit of the cameras. Instead of looking like a man paying tribute, he just looks utterly lost. Haunting.
Harry lays a wreath at the Last Post Ceremony during a visit to The Australian War Memorial on April 15 in Canberra
Credit where it is due. On this Australian quasi-royal tour, the Duchess of Sussex has never looked better. For once, her outfits were all wonderful, her grooming was perfect, she looked glamorous and marvellous in every way; a modern duchess in her diplomatic monochromes, right down to her Camilla And Marc pencil skirt, Manolo Blahnik pumps and Paspaley drop earrings. And what a treat, as an influencer-investor, her clothes are now all shoppable on the AI-powered fashion platform OneOff, just like those of Kate Hudson and Suki Waterhouse. Who says the world’s Most Bullied can’t also be the world’s Most Chic?
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