Meghan and Harry by all means demean yourselves, but don’t demean our Queen
WE can safely say that investment bankers at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are not obsessed with Harry and Meghan because she was in Suits.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex owe their global superstar status — and their massive earning potential — to their royal connections.
That is the wonderful irony about our runaway royals.
Harry and Meghan may despise everything about the royal life — the endless scrutiny, the boring engagements, all those fixed smiles for the peasants when they could be hanging out with Oprah and the Obamas and the Clooneys.
We get it. We truly do.
But do Harry and Meghan understand and ever admit to themselves that they owe EVERYTHING to their royal connections?
Without the magic dust that royalty bestows, JP Morgan — one of the world’s richest banks — would never have flown them in a private jet to an exclusive company beano. Don’t tell Greta Thunberg!
And without his royal blood, Prince Harry would not be in talks with Goldman Sachs about a future relationship.
A DUTY OF CARE
If they were not British royalty, Meghan would be a B-list actress whom few people had ever heard of and Harry an old soldier with two rotten A-levels (grade B in art and D in geography) from Eton — a school where my dog Stan could get four good grades and an offer from Oxbridge.
I do not doubt Harry and Meghan’s sincerity when they say they want to be financially independent.
But because they are poncing on royal connections, the couple have a duty of care to the Queen and to this country.
Please don’t embarrass the Royal Family, or British people who shelled out £32million for your wedding.
Please do not turn into the preening glove puppets of investment bankers.
Oh Harry, please don’t turn into Tony Blair in a tiara.
Oh Meghan, don’t become the 21st-century Fergie.
Prince Andrew’s reckless friendship with convicted billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has humiliated and damaged the Royal Family.
Andrew’s total lack of judgment may have done irreparable harm to the monarchy.
Many of us wonder if the institution will last after the Queen has gone.
So show some dignity, Harry and Meghan. Engage your brains, not your bank balance.
Have a little DISCRETION. Please do not pimp your royal connections to any passing dodgy billionaire or investment banker who claims to care deeply about your charity work.
Frankly, it doesn’t look good so far.
The nation cringed when Prince Harry buttonholed Disney boss Bob Iger at the London premiere of The Lion King, aggressively pitching Meghan’s availability for “voiceover” work.
A member of the Royal Family begging a Hollywood big-shot for work was not a pretty sight.
When they handed in their letter of resignation, Harry and Meghan made lofty announcements about “collaborating” with the Queen, as though Her Majesty, 93, is some grime DJ who could be brought in to remix their latest single.
The brutal truth is that we will not see much of Harry and Meghan in these parts.
This week they sacked 15 loyal UK staff and shut their Buckingham Palace office.
But by turning their backs on the royal life, Harry and Meghan have placed themselves in an almost impossible situation.
They claim to want to be financially independent of Prince Charles and the British taxpayer.
Then they will have to grab the big pay days where they can.
They will have to earn phenomenal sums of money to fund the lavish lifestyle to which they are accustomed.
But there is absolutely nothing in either of their CVs to suggest they can make that kind of dough without flogging their royal connections to the highest bidder.
If Harry and Meghan are going to support themselves, they are going to have to get their hands dirty in the working world.
Harry and Meghan will have to earn phenomenal sums of money to fund the lavish lifestyle to which they are accustomed.
Harry’s discussions with Goldman Sachs may be focused on his charity work right now, but investment bankers are not renowned for their boundless human compassion.
Big bankers — and mega-rich companies like Netflix and Apple — will look at Harry and Meghan and wonder what they can get out of them.
Harry and Meghan are free to demean themselves, as Harry did so spectacularly when he shook his diamond-encrusted begging bowl at the boss of Disney.
But please don’t demean this country.
Please don’t debase the Royal Family, as Prince Andrew has done.
Please, Harry and Meghan — do not embarrass the Queen.
Because let’s face it, chaps — without your royal connections, the pair of you really don’t add up to very much at all.
Keith finally quits
KEITH Richards is finally giving up cigarettes at the age of 76.
After all those wild decades, Keith – who is said to have smoked an estimated 876,000 fags in his time – clearly believes in moderation in all things.
Especially moderation in moderation.
Kate shows Tracy how it's done
IN a pithy turn of phrase worthy of Oscar Wilde, one commentator mused that Labour’s dishevelled Tracy Brabin looked like she had been “banged over a wheelie bin” in her off-the-shoulder frock in the House of Commons.
Showing Tracy how it is done, Kate Beckinsale looked stunning in a very similar off-the-shoulder number at a pre-Oscars party.
Kate also looks as though she has never even seen a wheelie bin.
Age means nothing
WHEN Taylor Swift picked up Best Solo Act In The World at the NME Awards I thought to myself: “Award winners didn’t look like that when I was on NME back in the day.”
But it’s not true. I recall Debbie Harry was a dazzling double NME winner in 1978 – Pin-Up Of The Year and Best Female Singer.
The NME may be 68 years old. But NME award winners never get any older.
Corona may nuke comrades
THE coronavirus could well be China’s Chernobyl – the national calamity that changes everything.
As the global death toll of the virus nears 1,500, the old men in Beijing who run China have never looked so woefully out of their depth.
The greatest hero in China today is Dr Li Wenliang, the 33-year-old Wuhan doctor who tried to warn the Communist regime of the virus.
Dr Li was arrested, bullied, humiliated, accused of scaremongering and later died of the virus.
That is what happens in a one-party state that considers all criticism to be treason.
China does not look like the next economic superpower today.
China looks like an inept one-party state that failed to grasp the seriousness of the virus, then stubbornly refused to heed the warnings that could have contained it, and has now exported it to the rest of the world.
The coronavirus came out of the so-called wet markets of China, where every conceivable animal is kept in filthy conditions to cater for the Chinese appetite for “exotic” animals.
BREEDING GROUND
Wolf pups, koala bears and assorted rats, bats and snakes are all on offer for the discerning wildlife gourmet, many under the counter.
These markets were the breeding ground for Sars nearly 20 years ago, and they were the breeding ground for the coronavirus.
Exactly how stupid can a regime be that allows the existence of these unregulated markets? The virus that is now polluting the entire planet was totally avoidable.
Mikhail Gorbachev was convinced that the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 caused the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later.
The Chernobyl explosion “opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression”, said Gorbachev. “To the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.”
If the coronavirus brings down China’s ruling Communist elite, it will be exactly what they deserve.
Leo's a teeny-weeny politician now
LEO Varadkar, Irish Prime Minister and Brussels lapdog, sneered, “Britain is now a small country!” when the UK left the European Union.
Now Leo has seen his Fine Gael party poll a wretched 20.9 per cent of the vote in the Irish general election, going from power to third place overnight.
Looks like Leo Varadkar is a teeny-weeny politician now.
The Beeb stopping being a state broadcaster years ago
BBC big shots are becoming increasingly shrill when making their case for keeping their greedy paws on the £4billion the corporation trousers every year from the licence fee.
Now BBC chairman David Clementi squeaks that ending the licence fee will mean scrapping children’s channel CBeebies.
Stop our money and you will make all the kiddies cry!
But the openly biased BBC stopped being a state broadcaster years ago.
It no longer deserves to be funded like one.
Moss be mistaken, Tanya
TANYA McDonnell is a modern success story.
Tanya was working in McDonald’s in Washington, Tyne-and-Wear, for £7 an hour until a modelling agency spotted her holiday shots on Instagram.
“I’d always looked up to people like Kate Moss,” says Tanya. “But I didn’t think I had a chance because I wasn’t pretty enough.”
Only in the age of social media could a girl go from having her picture taken on holiday to making a living as a model.
And only in the age of social media could someone who looks like Tanya McDonnell fret that she is not pretty enough.
Becks can dance
BROOKLYN Beckham is said to be considering a stint on Strictly to reboot his career.
I didn’t know he had one.
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