This was the headline, four months before Meghan married Harry: ‘Why I’m proud to be a Meghanomaniac…we need some Markle sparkle!’
Let’s quote the piece: ‘The first I knew I was smitten was when Meghan used the term ‘my rescue pups’ on national, prime-time TV to describe her beloved dogs Guy and Bogart … Meghan Markle, my goodness, even her initials are delicious: MMMMMM!’
The write-up, in YOU Magazine, goes on, about Harry: ‘My, has he gone up in our estimation! He has swollen in stature, eclipsed even his brother!, to become one half of a super couple we hope will eclipse even George and Amal. He has chosen a woman who has read every single tome ever written by Toni Morrison. Now, that’s class.’
I wrote that piece. And this one, on their wedding day – May 19, 2018 – in the Mail: ‘”You look amazing.” So mouthed Harry as he looked up to drink in his bride. He was echoing what every woman in the land was yelling at the screen as Meghan emerged from her Rolls-Royce. The dress is simple: who needs embellishment when you have that face?’
I had cooled a little, as one does in any marriage, by 2019. It was Bananagate, when Meghan, still a working Royal, visited sex workers in Bristol, scrawling positive mantras on fruit. ‘Was she signing her autograph?’ I wrote. ‘Would she get ink on the £1,500 Oscar de la Renta? No, Meghan. These women are not “loved”, they are not “special”. I’d have more admiration if, when she’s finished doing up that “cottage” in Windsor … she were to open its doors as a refuge instead. That would show these women they are loved. That would prove they’re special.’ Ouch!
Meghan and Harry celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary today, and boy how times and public opinion have changed! Words amongst the millions published jump off the page: ‘I’m not okay’, ‘Silent or Silenced?’, ‘Dog bowl’, ‘Near catastrophic car chase’, ‘We are not a racist family.’ And on and on. Note these are merely utterances from the royal family themselves, apart from America’s honorary queen, Oprah, who formed a perfect O of surprise as Meghan accused the Royal family of speculating over Archie’s skin colour.
I’ve had a ringside seat, watching how opinion of the couple in the press (and overwhelmingly on social media) has plummeted. I have written many, many pieces, trying to support her, swimming against a tide that resembles the now-polluted sea in Devon. One of my most recent expressed my real concern that the comments on X could provoke self harm or even suicide. How any human, if they read merely a scattering of the online abuse of Meghan, could survive such attacks is beyond me. The comments are unrepeatable, but the most anodyne include highlighting, with arrows, the difference in the colour of Meghan’s face compared to her scalp.
Of course, Meghan can be tone deaf: on the recent non-Royal visit to Nigeria she sported a Cartier watch, and backless and almost frontless dresses. She appeared to turn away from a woman mid-conversation. Rude!
And Harry? Well, he never quite morphed into George Clooney, a sort of roaming elder statesman with added testosterone (Harry still has his fans online; one post had a video of him lifting off, in full combat gear, in his Apache helicopter to fight, you know, the actual Taliban, alongside last week’s footage of William, in suit and tie, stood NEXT to a helicopter, receiving yet another gift – colonel-in-chief of the Army Air Corps – from his dear old dad). William did then of course get in the aircraft and fly it away, although that’s a small detail for Harry’s fans.
But today, whose team am I on? The past six years have been a rollercoaster, a series of disappointments, glimmers of hope. But I have to reveal (and I know I will now get a barrage of abuse; after my piece begging people to stop bullying Meghan, there were a flurry of posts on X, saying I have ‘no moral compass’ and ‘am a former bankrupt’) that the sight of Harry at St Paul’s, attending the service to celebrate 10 years of the Invictus Games, made me side with him, despite the fact he has often allowed himself to resemble a cash cow being pulled along roughly by a ring through his nose.
Harry cut an elegant figure as he mounted the steps in a perfectly fitted suit. He smiled and blew kisses to his loyal ‘blood family’, the Spencers. What a happy, handsome, dashing lot they are, a family, not a Firm. While at the same time, down the road, King Charles hosted yet another dreary Garden Party (along with the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Gloucester) to which we, the lowly subjects who can’t afford a hat, were not invited.
No wonder Meghan merely touched down, dragonfly fashion, at Heathrow en route to Africa.
The Royal Family, sans Catherine, has never looked so old, tired and, yes, frankly boring, despite Camilla doing her stoic, uncomplaining best. I’m reminded, not in a good way, of the quote from Bridget Jones’s Diary, uttered by purple-faced Julian: ‘The earrings measuring just over a centimetre, in a lovely mock gold. The exact replica of those worn at Wimbledon in 1993 by Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Kent.’
These satellite royals are, literally, a punch line.
Enlisting Beatrice to inject some glamour and youth will not help. We’re not interested! Charles and William, be the bigger men. Give Harry and Meghan the best anniversary gift they could imagine. Welcome the Firm’s biggest assets back into the fold.
