IT was with mounting distress that I sat in front of my television as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, those hand-wringing, professional humanitarians from California, proceeded to commit crime after crime against humanity.
The first three episodes of their docuseries, Harry & Meghan, were far worse than anything this couple have done before.
Harry & Meghan’s Netflix doc is far worse than anything they have done before
The Sussexes, in cahoots with Netflix, have taken to boring us to death
We learned Meghan thought Kate was ‘formal’ – such a surprise for a senior royal
The Sussexes, in cahoots with Netflix, have taken to boring us to death.
What of the dramatic teaser trailers, with their tantalising suggestions of bombshells terrible in their velocity, viciousness and impact? Viewer, they lied.
Whilst the Royal Family has cause to be relieved, at least until the next three episodes, I was foaming.
As Meghan flicked her hair and her husband pinged off banalities like the player of a rusty piano, it was like buying a ticket to a new blockbuster then finding, after someone secretly switched the film, that you were watching a B movie instead.
So much for revelations. There are more of those in the Bible.
We learned that Meghan thought Kate was “formal” (such a surprise for a senior royal. Did she expect her to breakdance?); that “some Brits” have a problem with being “hugged” (I would too if it was by a human barracuda); whilst Harry, wearing his shining new woke shoes, courtesy of the Meghan Markle Emporium For Aspiring Activists, lectured us earnestly on the iniquities of the tabloid Press and “the unconscious racism” of the British people.
What of the promised and much advertised scoops?
Meghan took us on a world-exclusive tour of the couple’s hen coop (I bet some rapacious pap was eating his heart out); Harry told us that he went down on one knee to propose marriage (hold the front page) and that he really loved his mother, Princess Diana, who was pursued by the Press (Harry has yet to realise that repetition is not the better part of good television), and that he “sacrificed everything he knew” to join Meghan’s “world”.
To be fair, there he hit the nail on the head.
He has indeed sacrificed everything he knew, whilst failing to acquire any new knowledge after he moved to California.
The terrible truth is (and I refer not to anyone else’s “truth” but to plain fact), that both Harry and Meghan are two of the dullest people on the planet, with no notable achievements to their names save that of monumental entitlement and narcissism.
They speak in heavy woke dialect and clumsy glottal stops, without a glimmer of humour.
Meghan, despite being slicker than her husband, is neither profound nor witty.
To paraphrase the American writer Dorothy Parker, you can lead a bore to culture but you can’t make her think.
Harry, who once showed impish charm and joie de vivre, is tedium on a monument.
It would be no exaggeration to say that he has become the most boring member of the Royal Family, and given that some of his ancestors bored for England, this is no inconsiderable feat.
In the 1939 Hollywood classic Mr Smith Goes To Washington, James Stewart, playing a US Senator, makes use of something called the filibuster, which allows a senator to hold the floor as long as he can remain upright and talking, even if he recites children’s poetry or reads extracts from a recipe his granny once sent him. We were filibustered.
We were filibustered.
A former television actress with a CV shorter than a Wizard Of Oz Munchkin and a privileged prince of self pity just made a laughing stock of a global audience and the world’s biggest streaming giant.
No one is vainer than the concrete temptress Meghan, nor more enamoured of her own charms.
Human sacrifice
The duchess guards her image, believing herself to have the looks and talent of Madame Curie, Julia Roberts and Nefertiti combined.
A contact of mine at Netflix told me she likes to be photographed in three-quarter profile and gets into high dudgeon when a cameraman forgets the homage due to her incomparable beauty.
In a section in which the couple claim to have “documented themselves” to prove “their story”, Meghan appears bare faced and with a towel wrapped around her hair.
What courage to face her foes without the armoury of expertly applied slap that usually accompanies her into battle.
Surely this stand against the perfected presence expected of women in the public eye is worthy of praise?
Only my contact revealed that Meghan spent three days studying the film and, initially, didn’t want it to be used.
And what of hapless Haz been? I fear that he is the real victim in all this. An emotionally susceptible young man, with a childhood marred by tragedy, he was always going to fall hard when it came to women.
It is clear that he worships at the shrine of Meghan and constantly seeks her approval, like a child with its mother.
He is a middle-aged man, yet he talks of their love affair as if they were Romeo and Juliet, saying, at one point, “this is only the start”.
The tragedy is that Harry has been infantilised by his obsessive love for his wife, follows her blindly and would say or do anything to please her.
Most men, when they fall in love and marry, enter into a more or less evenly balanced contract.
The measure of love may be what you give up for it, but in most cases the sacrifices are bilateral.
Harry has become contemptuous of the country that nurtured him, housed him and worshipped at his feet
In Harry’s case things are different.
He is a willing human sacrifice, lying happily on an altar to propitiate the goddess that is Meghan.
This is not to say that Meghan doesn’t love him in return, but it seems more like the fondness one would bestow on a faithful gun dog.
The spectre of Princess Diana looms large.
William loved and lost his mother, too, but she does not control him from beyond the grave, nor influence his marriage.
It is as if Harry, in his grief and rage at Diana’s death, feels his life is an act of compensation.
It is instructive to note that he seems to think that Meghan is a sort of reincarnation of the late princess.
Harry could not save Diana from her terrible fate, so he has transferred his sense of guilt on to Meghan, and in doing so, genuinely believes that there are people in the media or elsewhere who seek to harm her.
Harry is acolyte and protector, willing to attack any person or idea that his wife finds objectionable.
Thus he takes her cue on every contentious issue, and because she so obviously loathes the British, he rejects his own people to please her.
Harry has become contemptuous of the country that nurtured him, housed him and worshipped at his feet.
Under Meghan’s influence, Harry looks as if he has nothing left to live for.
Under Meghan’s influence, Harry looks as if he has nothing left to live for
More than once, his wife can be seen making sure her husband looks appropriately sombre and victimised.
How skillfully Meghan baited her traps and turned a Happy Prince into someone with a vendetta, chiefly against his country of birth.
Living in the 50 shades of green that is Montecito, he looks back across at us and glares.
According to the new unimproved duke, we are a hotbed of racism, and our Empire was the most reprehensible in history.
A left-wing historian, hired by Netflix, sat in a chair and declared, presumably for the benefit of Americans, that Britain had its own “Deep South”.
A second left-wing historian announced gloomily that Britain’s palaces and stately homes are shrines to imperialism, stuffed with art that glorifies slavery.
It might seem churlish to point out that Harry lived in some of those palaces without noticing this.
Things got worse as logic was abandoned altogether.
I watched, baffled, as Brexit was brought into court and put in the dock.
Apparently, a vote cast for Brexit was a vote cast for slavery and the real reason Meghan couldn’t stay in the UK.
Odd, given Brexit was concerned with leaving the EU, not with persecuting mixed-race Americans.
I am prepared to concede that Meghan may have experienced an incident or two of racism, spite or unfriendliness.
Sombre and victimised
But if two people, according to their “truth”, receive universal ill treatment, the likelihood is that the cause lies in themselves, and that they either imagine injuries or behave in such a way as to arouse uncontrollable irritation.
After the first episodes of this docuseries my irritation is uncontrollable.
I feel cheated, conned and exploited and I have grave doubts that I shall fully recover my interest in life.
I need me-time to process my distress and find my truth again, preferably in a mansion in California.
Apparently, a vote cast for Brexit was a vote cast for slavery and the real reason Meghan couldn’t stay in the UK
