There is out of touch with reality and there is Prince Harry’s concept of reality. One is excusable in privileged people like royalty, the other entails a disassociation from the real world which is just annoying.
I give you this week’s treat, namely, in the ITV documentary, Tabloids on Trial. In it he intimates that his courageous “mission” against the tabloid press “caused … part of a rift” with the royal family. Asked if his fight had destroyed the relationship with his family, he said, “Yeah, that’s certainly a central piece to it … but you know, that’s a hard question to answer because anything I say about my family results in a torrent of abuse from the press.”
At the risk of adding my droplet to the torrent, this suggestion that his problems with the press are central to his estrangement from his family is nuts. Where do I start?
Well, there was his decision to decamp from the UK and leave the humdrum royal business of attending things to people like his no-nonsense aunt Anne, who is right now over in Paris
There was the suggestion from Meghan, shyly revealed to Oprah Winfrey, that the royal family was racist because someone speculated on the skin colour of the then prenatal Archie. Piers Morgan subsequently named the King and Kate as the possible offenders, but the whole idea of racial bias among the royals was silly and, for idiots, immensely damaging.
There wa, not least about a fight with his brother in which William wrestled him to the ground, broke his necklace (I know, what was he doing with a necklace?) and cracked a dog bowl on the floor. Harry then revealed that he told his therapist first about it (just for fun, think what the late Duke of Edinburgh would have said to that) and then Meghan, who was “terribly sad”.
In another interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby, a friend, he revealed, “I saw this red mist in him” which must have brought on another red mist episode.
Truth to tell, what with Oprah and Bradby and Spare and Endgame (Omid Scobie’s helpful account) and the rest, it’s quite difficult to keep a running account of Harry’s grievances. But I expect his family has kept count.
Behind all this has been that remarkable spectacle of the Harry and Meghan Give Us Privacy world tour in which the pair use any available outlet to express their utter antipathy to any media intrusion into their very private lives, while at the same time making use of any and every press outlet to flog their product which is Sussex Royal or whatever variant of their title is handiest. To put it another way, their sole marketable commodity is not (the latest offer from Montecito) but the residual glamour attaching to their status and title which is what makes people sign up for Meghan’s tips and their podcasts.
That having-cake and eating-cake philosophy must grate with the royals.