JUDGING by the size of her bump, the Duchess of Sussex’s second pregnancy is already nudging towards the third trimester.
Congratulations to both her and Harry, it’s a welcome piece of joyful news amid the general gloom of the pandemic.
But the photo that accompanied the announcement is yet another puzzling contradiction from a couple who persistently maintain they want privacy while their actions scream otherwise.
The image is as artfully posed as a scene from a Hollywood movie and taken (remotely) by a friend who just happens to be a Vogue photographer. As you do.
Any PR adviser will tell you (and Meghan and Harry have plenty of them) that it’s so eye-catching it’s guaranteed to make front pages around the world. Which is precisely what it did.
If you’re an A-list celebrity like, say, Beyonce or Meghan’s close friend Serena Williams, then choosing to pose for a photo of your pregnancy is par for the course. But if, as the Sussexes constantly claim, you’re just an ordinary couple who want a “normal” life away from the media glare, it’s massively contradictory.
After all, we didn’t know Meghan was pregnant until they chose to tell us, so if their privacy is so precious to them, why didn’t they just stay schtum?
Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix and his fiancée Rooney Mara said nothing about her pregnancy (other than to family and friends) and didn’t publicly acknowledge their son’s arrival until he was two months old.
‘MIXED MESSAGES’
Ditto Cameron Diaz and husband Benji Madden, who announced the birth of their daughter with a short statement to say that, while they were overjoyed, they “feel a strong instinct to protect our little one’s privacy . . . so we won’t be posting pictures or sharing any more details”. Fair enough.
Likewise, Daniel Craig stars in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time, yet when he and wife Rachel Weisz were expecting their daughter, now two, there was no official announcement or staged photo, in keeping with their stated desire to keep their personal life “private”.
This stance protects them and, even though you might see a rare and distant photo of them strolling through New York with a buggy, the child’s face is always pixilated and rightly so.
It’s proof that you can be a public figure and maintain a level of privacy around your personal life — but only if you yourself don’t blur the edges between the two.
In short, if you release a glossy, magazine-style photo of an intimate moment, you can’t then bleat about invasion of privacy when a paparazzo snaps you walking down a public street.
But Harry and Meghan send out mixed messages with their “look at me”, “don’t look at me”, “look at me”, “don’t look at me” behaviour.
First of all, they left the 33-acre, perfectly private environs of Frogmore “Cottage”, with its ten bedrooms and state-funded security detail, for a McMansion sandwiched between Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres in the paparazzi capital of the world. Go figure.
Then we were treated to the hagiography Finding Freedom, which included the innermost thoughts of this, er, intensely private couple who initially denied co-operating with the authors.
We were told how they felt about each other on their first date and, among other nuggets, made privy to Meghan’s innermost thoughts as she did her morning yoga practice on the banks of the Zambezi river.
But, shock horror, it turned out that the authors weren’t mind readers at all . . . they’d been fed this previously private detail by a close friend of Meghan’s who she had authorised to speak on her behalf.
Just like five of her mates also dished the detail to People magazine of what was in her “private” letter, written by committee at Buckingham Palace, to estranged father Thomas Markle.
Or rather, the selective detail that suited the “Meghan is amazing and totally in the right” narrative.
‘CELEBRITY OVER DUTY’
And now, hot on the heels of Meghan’s latest privacy win against Associated Newspapers, this intensely secretive couple have just announced they will record a 90-minute “tell-all” TV interview with chat show queen Oprah.
Words fail me.
What Meghan and Harry want, it seems, is media coverage on their terms . . . akin to the state-sponsored guff pumped out in tinpot dictatorships.
But forced or manipulated praise is worthless. It’s far better to earn people’s respect by showing, not telling them, that you are worthy of it.
The British public loved Harry and Meghan and rejoiced in their wedding, but it’s patently obvious that they decided to choose “celebrity” over royal duty.
I just wish they’d be honest about it.
Gripes shame
The boss of accountancy giant KPMG has been forced to resign after telling his well-paid staff they should stop moaning about work because they were fortunate to even have a job in these challenging times.
It seems this blunt truth caused offence to a few hypersensitive types. Sigh.
Meanwhile, George Bailey, 80, is thrilled at being gifted an electric bike by a shop in Maidstone, Kent, as it means he can tackle his long-standing paper round with renewed vigour.
An admirable work ethic that should make those delicate souls at KPMG hang their heads in shame.
It’s net on Rita
The estranged wife of Man City player Riyad Mahrez has been fined for breaking lockdown at a party in a London flat.
When confronted by police, Rita, 28, asked them: “Don’t you like to party?”
Sigh. Yes dear, we all do.
In fact, a survey this week revealed that the rest of us have gone 301 days without fun and are desperate for some excitement in our lives.
We also like to go on holidays but, unlike the dopey “influencers” who justify flying to hotspots like Dubai because it’s good for their mental health, most of us are following the “essential travel only” rule whether we like it or not.
Because if we all put our own wants, needs and desires ahead of abstaining for the greater good, then we’ll be in lockdown for ever.
No need to act like a living doll, Kendall
Kendall Jenner is a model and, consequently, the living embodiment of “beauty” as defined by the youth-obsessed industry that pays her.
But, despite the 25-year-old’s natural loveliness, her latest photo has caused controversy over claims that it has been altered via filters.
An Instagram user called @problematicfame claimed that: “The smoothing around the bikini line is ridiculous. Nobody looks like that. Gals have lines, razor bumps, discolouration etc.”
She added that she wasn’t having a go at Kendall, but simply wanted to point out to young girls that images on the internet can be posed and filtered so they should never compare their own bodies to those of celebrities.
A valuable message in a time when the self-esteem of impressionable youngsters is worryingly precarious.
In 2016, Barbie maker Mattel responded to criticism that the famous doll was “humanly impossible in terms of proportion” and brought out a range with varying body shapes.
As Kendall resembles the original “humanly impossible” version, perhaps it’s advisable that she should show her perfectly natural lumps and bumps to her legion of young fans.
Right to vac
Having sat through the Rose West trial, I sympathise with those who wonder why this monstrous woman has been given the coronavirus jab ahead of millions of others.
But what’s the alternative?
Firstly, those in charge of rolling out the vaccine simply don’t have the time to sift through millions of names and weed out those who are less deserving of it than the rest, so working their way through everyone via age group is the easiest method.
And secondly, prisons are cheek-by-jowl places where a virus will spread like wildfire and, given that many serious criminals have underlying health issues, who wants the security risk of having to take them to the nearest hospital ICU?
