Further evidence this week that Prince Harry still hasn’t quite got a handle on this privacy thing. It has emerged that Harry has written a tell-all memoir (or rather someone else has written it for him) in which, according to the publisher, he will “offer an honest and captivating personal portrait”.
his from a man who fled to America, supposedly to escape such incursions into his privacy. But who has, in the months since, spilled his guts at every available paying opportunity about his life, his family and his enduring sense of palatial persecution.
At least Harry no longer needs to worry about the tabloids. He’s become one.
He’s now the prime vehicle delivering stories about his feud with his family — and not the media he so hates. He’s the one breaching his own privacy and that of close family members.
After Oprah, you’d think there wouldn’t be much left to tell. Not least since he and Meghan said that would be their last word on the subject.
But now, it appears, there’s a further 90,000 or so words Harry needs to get off his chest.
For this he is being paid, reportedly, $20m. A fair bit more than 30 pieces of silver, but from much the same exchequer.
The money, it’s claimed, will go to charity. Which one isn’t specified. Possibly the Royal Institute for the Protection of Trapped Princes.
Harry himself says he’s writing the book: “Not as the prince I was born, but as the man I’ve become.”
It’s a clever line which suggests, on one hand, that he’s discarded his palace connections, but at the same time evokes his royal status.
For avoidance of doubt, his online statement was signed “Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex.”
The man Harry’s become is still monetising his princely titles. And why wouldn’t he?
Even if the totals have been exaggerated, the eye-watering sums he and his wife are being paid for what appears to be very little output (Netflix, Spotify etc) depend very much on Harry hanging on to that ‘prince-I-was-born’ label. If he really was just plain old Harry Whinger-Mountbatten, he wouldn’t be such big box-office.
And he’s certainly been making hay while the Californian sun shines.
In the couple of years since he and the missus “stepped back” from royal life, they’ve enthusiastically stepped up the royal minting-it business.
In the process, the pair of them have revitalised a royal-watching industry which was in the doldrums due to other, duller, family members keeping their mouths shut and focussing on the ribbon-cutting.
Now, there’s no end of royal experts, insiders and commentators raking it in from podcasts, broadcasts, gossip mags and TV specials.
Harry deserves a gong from the Department of Employment for services to job-creation.
There’s even a royal body language expert, who makes a living out of deciphering tics and twitching when the feuding brothers are pictured together.
When you’ve created such controversy that your nervous knuckle-cracking is subject to media analysis, it might be a warning that you’ve overdone the self-invasion of privacy, Harry.
The upcoming book is unlikely to take heat out of the situation. Harry must know that. The publishers will want their money’s worth.
So, the “honest and moving” expose will presumably involve more nastiness about his once-beloved brother, old Pa and Duchess Camilla.
Perhaps Meghan is now also working on her own volume of memoirs. The Obamas (whom she admires) did both his and hers autobiographies. Twice the pay-check!
But even mega-money isn’t everything. For someone who’s been open about his mental health struggles, the drama that’s been whipped up, the pressure he’s under, can’t be good for Harry.
You would hope that those around him, those who capitalise on his truth-bombing, recognise this. His unpopularity this side of the Atlantic can’t be helping the notoriously touchy Prince, either.
In a newspaper poll this week, two-thirds of respondents claimed they’re not even interested in reading his book.
I don’t believe that for a moment. People will gobble it up.
It will be extracted, dissected, analysed and debated in the Press, on air, online, everywhere.
It will be welcome fodder for those very tabloids and gossip mags Harry purports to despise.
A tell-all book is an odd way to go about respecting your own privacy. But anything to make money. And in pursuit of that objective, Harry doesn’t seem to care whom he hurts.
Maybe not even himself.
Vulture visitor has its own cross to bear
With temperatures rising to Saharan levels this week, it was unsurprising to learn that an Egyptian vulture had been spotted in Killyleagh. How long before the camels move up, too? The big bird was spotted by Seamus McKendry, a man with a great turn of phrase. He’d previously observed a falcon with a wingspan of about 6ft. “It was like a crucifix going over the house, with the wings.” The vulture was attracted by the balmy weather. Let’s hope it can also cope with hailstones.
Protocol talk is just utter nonsense
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng says our much disputed Protocol wasn’t meant to be a long-term thing.
“A deal is a deal, but it wasn’t something that was going to last forever.”
The utter nonsense being talked by Government spokesmen about the Protocol row is just diversion tactics. Anything to take attention away from the reality. They signed up for it. It causes problems here. They couldn’t care less.
A down to Earth reply
Just as he achieves his childhood dream of blasting into space (or close proximity) comes unsettling news for billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Almost 200,000 people signed a petition against allowing him to come back down again.
Also, his fellow passenger, 82-year-old Wally Funk, who’d excelled in astronaut training in her youth but was excluded from space travel because she’s female, described her 11-minute trip as dark, short and crowded.
And to think we complain about Ryanair…
