PLATELL’S PEOPLE: I cannot believe I’m saying it but I feel sorry for Harry
Much derision has been heaped on Meghan and Harry’s new ‘£18 million’ Spotify podcast — presumably titled It’s All About Meghan or Am I Not Fantastic?
But the most notable thing was Harry’s near-absence from the show.
This week’s guest was Serena Williams, discussing how tough it is to be a rich and successful woman and how female ‘ambition’ is often confused with pushiness.
In fact, the only person who seems to be being pushed around here is Meghan’s husband: the Queen’s grandson, without whom the minor TV actress would not have a global platform for her self-pitying grievances.
The only person who seems to be being pushed around here is Meghan’s husband: the Queen’s grandson, without whom the minor TV actress would not have a global platform for her self-pitying grievances
In the hour-long podcast, Harry had just a 30-second cameo. As he lurked in the shadows, his wife asked with mock surprise: ‘Do you wanna come say hi? Look who just popped in!’
Harry said to Serena Williams: ‘I like what you’ve done with your hair. That’s a great vibe.’
What would the men who served alongside him in Afghanistan have thought of that?
Harry’s apparently subservient role was also on show last year, when she launched her children’s book The Bench. He was seen in the video juggling — or trying to — behind her.
Meghan and Harry have embarked on a new venture, an ‘£18 million’ Spotify podcast
Consider everything he has lost: the respect of his country, his family, many of his friends, even his grandfather Prince Philip during his dying days.
How humiliating it all is for a man who served in the Army for ten years, rising to the rank of Captain, and had a distinguished record flying Apache helicopters over Helmand.
There are rumours that the cover of Harry’s upcoming tell-all memoir about his horrid life as a royal features a picture not just of him, as you’d expect, but Megs, too. The word emasculated comes to mind.
There was a time when Harry was one of the most loved royals. Now when Mr and Mrs Sussex come to Britain next month, we hear he has no plans to meet William. It’s tragic: to be estranged from your sibling — your children not meeting their cousins.
He has become a walk-on part in The Me-Me-Meghan Show, eclipsed by his wife’s ambition.
I never thought I’d say this, but I feel sorry for Harry.
Ich bin a plonker
A study tells us what we knew: that we remember phrases from foreign languages learnt at school even when we can’t speak the lingo.
As a teenager I studied German, and when travelling there years later liberally used the only two phrases I remembered: ‘Ein Glas Weisswein,’ which always got me a glass of white wine. and ‘Ich bin zerschlagen.’ which I thought meant ‘I am very well’, but was horrified years later to learn it meant ‘I am smashed out of my head’.
Aaron is Rivals hunk for me
Thrilled that Jilly Cooper’s erotic 1980s masterpiece Rivals is to be made into an eight-part Disney+ series. I first interviewed Jilly at about the time when the book came out, and have loved her ever since. But who will play the dashing, aristocratic, rutting swordsman Rupert Campbell-Black? Hugh Grant? Too old. Aidan ‘Poldark’ Turner? Too short. Gerard Butler? Too Scottish. My money’s on Aaron Taylor-Johnson: tall, hunky, mysterious . . . and he’s already got a double-barrelled name.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson: tall, hunky, mysterious . . . and he’s already got a double-barrelled name
Play the game, Emma
So Britain’s teenage tennis darling Emma Raducanu is forecast to become the first $1 billion UK sports star after winning the U.S. Open last year — but precious little since.
What she seems to have been busy doing is securing multi- million endorsements from Porsche, Dior, Nike and other brands, who perhaps saw her not as a true star of the game but a gorgeous clothes-horse who’d look good in Vogue.
Earth to Emma: being weighed down by Tiffany bling ain’t helping your tennis.
Britain’s teenage tennis darling Emma Raducanu is forecast to become the first $1 billion UK sports star after winning the U.S. Open last year
- A touch of the Eva Perons to J-Lo’s lavish wedding to Ben Affleck. Such opulence during hard times! three dresses, one costing about £800,000 and one including 1,000 silk handkerchiefs stitched together. At least if, like most celebrity marriages, it ends in divorce, she’ll have lots of hankies to soak up her tears.
Emily’s Brexit woes
Ex-BBC presenter Emily Maitlis whines about Auntie’s culture of ‘both-sideism’ during the Brexit debates where she found herself forced to interview both Leavers and Remainers. It’s called impartiality, Emily — and the BBC is nothing without it.
At least now Emily can flaunt her true colours on her unmissable new podcast — a show certain to secure at least 12 listeners.
- Judi Dench wept when The Repair Shop restored a treasured pocketwatch she’d given her late husband Michael Williams as a love token. I know her joy. Just before Dad died, he asked me to find him a clean pair of socks — and at the bottom of the drawer I found the watch Mum had given him as a 50th wedding present. It cost far more to repair than it’s worth — but to me it’s priceless, and on my wrist as I write.
- Shortly after returning from a family holiday, swimmer Adam Peaty announces his ‘romantic relationship’ with Eiri Munro is over. ‘We have enjoyed a wonderful three years together, two of them with our gorgeous son George,’ says Adam. ‘I’m sorry for letting you down.’ We fans are unimpressed. You came back from holiday and dumped your family almost as fast as the time you took to win gold in the 50m at the Commonwealth Games this year.
Westminster wars
The asylum bill is now £2 billion a year and the number of illegal migrants has doubled since Brexit.
What a betrayal of the millions who voted Leave. I admire Boris’s undinting defence of Ukraine’s borders — but what a shame he failed to protect our own.
The Civil Service seem set to go on strike. Given that most of them don’t even turn up for work in the office anyway, will anyone notice?
Health problems reportedly mean the Queen will not travel to the Palace to ask her 15th PM to form a government. Instead, Liz or Rishi will fly to Balmoral. But given both candidates’ fondness for preening photoshoots, you could forgive Her Maj for thinking a phone call might do the job.
A bit late for Rishi to claim he argued passionately against the scientists taking us into Covid lockdown.
Not only was he at the heart of the government that bullied people into cowering in their homes: he’s directly to blame for spending £376 billion on the pandemic response — a sum that might yet bankrupt the country.
Why seatbelts are crucial
Twenty-five years on, conspiracy theories still abound surrounding Diana’s death. But the terrible truth is that her passing was as grimly fateful as that of Yagmur Ozden.
Yagmur was killed when the Range Rover she was travelling in flew off the road while doing ‘100mph’ in West London. The saddest part? Neither Diana or Yagmur was wearing a seatbelt — but in both crashes, survivors were.
- My moggie Ted was horrified to hear the RSPCA report of a 14 per cent increase in cats being abandoned in the cost-of-living crisis. Ted asked me to remind readers that cats can be fed on dried food for as little as £1 a day (with the occasional bit of tinned tuna thrown in) — and need nothing more except lots of love.
- Some cricket fans thought the supposed hard-man, England captain Ben Stokes, had bowled a career googly when he admitted in his Phoenix From The Ashes documentary that depression was the reason he took four months off the game. But most of us — and I’ve had my own tussles with the black dog — thought it courageous of him. As Ben rightly said: ‘It’s a strength to speak out about stuff like this. And I am f***ing tough.’
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