Oprah interview: Meghan and Harry have let down the Queen with their selfish shenanigans

In the end, it was much as expected, like a seamless continuation of the cringe-making interview the Princess of Wales gave to Martin Bashir back in the dark days of 1995, but with Meghan Markle as Diana and Oprah Winfrey as Bashir.

Once again, the villains of the piece were “the Palace” and the tabloid press, which, according to Meghan’s husband, Prince Harry, continue to live in a symbiotic relationship governed by threats, fear and mutual suspicion.

“There is a level of control by fear that has existed for generations.”

So grim was the situation that on several occasions during her 18-month stay in England, the Duchess of Sussex had considered suicide – “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore” – but “the Palace,” unbending, refused to let her seek help, she claimed.

Most damningly, during the months when she was pregnant, concerns were, allegedly expressed about her baby’s skin colour, combined with hints that he would not receive either police protection or a title.

If conjecture around how dark Archie might turn out to be, given that his mother is bi-racial, was indeed a feature of gossip within the Royal household (which would surprise no one), that would certainly explain how reticent the Duke and Duchess were to show him off to the press in the weeks following his birth.

As to who might possibly have raised such a concern, said by Harry to have happened prior to their marriage, Meghan wouldn’t say, “because I think that would be very damaging to them”. In hospital, where he has been forced to endure this latest ordeal while recovering from heart surgery, the Duke of Edinburgh, will no doubt have slept more easily.

Beyond expressing surprise that she was expected to hand over her American passport and drivers license upon joining “the firm” and to curtsy the first time she met the Queen, the Duchess had little else of substance to relate that we didn’t know already or couldn’t readily imagine. The whole business of being co-opted into the royal family was “frightening,” but also wearisome. Why, she implied, had no one told her that her life would change dramatically if she married the man sixth in line to the throne and assumed the title of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex?

“I left everything for him,” she told Winfrey.

Well, not quite. There was also the small business of their walking out on the entire business less than two years into what was expected to be a run at least as long as The Mousetrap. The former actress, best known for her role as a paralegal in the television drama Suits, told viewers that she had been denied the right to continue to work and that, with money and security in mind, she and Harry had no choice but to flee to California, via Canada, and to accept lucrative contracts from Spotify and Netflix.

For his part, Harry chose to dwell on the only subject on which he could hope to win Mastermind, growing up after the tragic death of his mother. You would think that, aged 36, there was nothing left to be said. But no. He felt “really let down” by his father, Prince Charles, who had been through something similar and knew what pain felt like. He would always love his father, but a lot of hurt had happened.

Charles, he said, had even at one point stopped taking his calls.

“Harry,” said Meghan, “saved all of us … he made a decision [to resign from the royal family] that certainly saved my life and saved all of us.”

The Queen will be relieved to learn that, as “colonel of the regiment,” she is above criticism and held in the utmost respect. Apparently, she and her errant grandson have spoken more in the last 12 months than for “many, many years”.  Prince William, similarly, will be glad to learn that his brother “loves him to bits” and that all is well between his wife and William’s wife, the Duchess of Cambridge.

The problem was that Harry, as the younger brother of the future king, was trapped within the system. “My father and brother are trapped, too. They don’t get to leave and I have huge compassion for that.”

Indeed. Harry’s compassion is as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon.

Throughout the interview, billed as an “intimate conversation,” the couple looked to be a perfect match, she in a black, belted dress by Georgio Armani, he in his trademark grey suit and open necked shirt. They had been advised to choose colours that complemented each other and “foster trust”.

But as the Sussexes shared their secrets with Oprah, the Queen of All Media, including the fact that their second child will be a girl, one question above all hung in the air: did their mood match the mood of the country – and which country, the United Kingdom or the United States?

The question is hanging still. If “the people,” as distinct from the popular press, were mentioned, I must have missed it.

One thing we know for sure. America was riveted by these latest royal revelations. This was big. It was bigger than the Superbowl. But it was also as much about the host as her guests. As the New York Times live coverage put it this morning, viewers – reckoned in the high millions – “were reminded of the skill, empathy and just all-around mastery of communication and focus of Oprah Winfrey as interviewer. Even if it was all showbiz, even it was all an act, for viewers it felt engrossing and moving.”

Perhaps. If this was 1937 and Oprah’s guests had been the Duke of Windsor – lately King Edward VIII – and his bride, the American Wallis Simpson, I would definitely have agreed with that verdict. The Duke had given up his throne for the woman he loved, who, though she might in the meantime have enjoyed a dalliance with the Nazi ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, had decided that Edward should remain her third and final husband.

Somehow, though, When Harry Met Meghan didn’t carry quite the same resonance. Theirs is history repeated as season two of an ongoing sitcom, in which tragedy quickly gives way to farce. It’s Schitt’s Creek meets It’s a Royal Knockout – Us-Too, or We Two against the world. It reeks of showbiz, privilege and money. Stepping back and “working to become financially independent” – their stated aim when they gave up their role as “senior royals” – turned out to have nothing to do with getting a job or going back to acting – if it ever did. Instead, it meant a multi-year “partnership” with Spotify and a multi-million-dollar deal with Netflix to create programmes that inform “but also give hope”.

We should all be so hopeful.

I am not a republican. What would be the point? The Royal Family are like the weather: lots of wet and windy days, with occasional sunny intervals, all of it beyond our control.

Besides, if truth be told, I rather admire the Queen and even have a soft spot for Prince Philip, ghastly old curmudgeon that he is. I hope he makes it past his hundredth. My mother, a notably undemonstrative woman, was a Royalist through and through. Her favourite line from world cinema was when Rob Roy MacGregor, played by Richard Todd in a Walt Disney swords & muskets drama, was told by King George that he was a great rogue and replied, “And you, Sire, a great king”.

Since then, the whole “rogues” and “Sire” thing has rather gone out the window. Princess Anne once told me to “f*** off” when I pursued her across the Scottish Highlands on a hopeless quest on behalf of the Daily Mail. I welcomed her candour and did as she asked. All the same, my mother would not have been impressed.

But my dialogue with the Princess Royal was not the end of my engagement with the Palace. At a reception sometime in the mid-1990s, I shook hands with the Princess of Wales, who offered me one of her trademark winsome smiles. According to my wife, I was in raptures. Not very long after, having been alerted to the death of “Laydee Di” in a car crash in Paris by a tear-stricken French hotelier, I covered Diana’s funeral, standing with the crowd on the Mall, whose hysteria, I must confess, made me wonder if the British people had lost their minds.

So, though sceptical of the value of royalty and aware that it has no defence in logic, I am not one of those lining up to ensure that Elizabeth II is not succeeded by Charles III. That, though, is where it stops.  I have little time for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The word supernumerary springs to mind when I hear their names mentioned. Also, “useless”.

Their audience with Oprah, shown last night as a Primetime Special on CBS, is set to dominate tonight’s viewing on ITV, where, as you will surely recall, it replaces the previously scheduled crime drama, Unforgotten. But the couple’s 90-minute encounter with their good friend, one of the richest women in the world, revealed only what we already knew, that Harry and Meghan, while manifestly self-serving, self-pitying, self-indulgent and utterly self-absorbed, completely lack self-awareness.

The Sussex’s time in the confessional, like Frost and Nixon, but with Palace intrigue instead of Watergate and perceived slights in place of the bombing of Cambodia, proved in the end to be a masterpiece of irrelevance because, honestly – no, really – who, in the midst of a Covid pandemic, with Brexit still ripping through the economy like a knife through butter, gives a toss what these two soft-focus prima donnas, steeped in self-pity, think about anything?

What transpired didn’t so much let light into the magic as confirm that the magic is too often an illusion.

So, did the Duke and Duchess emerge from their Hello-style interrogation with their reputations intact? For this was their moment – hers in particular. It was their chance, freely provided by their monumentally-ambitious billionaire host, to set the record straight and to persuade the great viewing public in the midst of Lockdown that they are not a total waste of space.

The most that can be said is that they didn’t blow it. They remained calm and collected, even serene. They didn’t make fools of themselves and they came across as genuinely committed, both to each other and to their son Archie – whom we should acknowledge is the Earl of Dumbarton – and his as-yet unborn sister. Those who loved them as Oprah began her sympathetic introduction will probably have loved them even more as the credits rolled.

The interview pre-dated the allegations that the duchess bullied her staff while still on royal duty in the UK, so none of that came up, which was a stroke of luck.  Whether any of it matters in the grand scheme of things depends on whether or not you think the pair are part of any grand scheme that goes beyond celebrity and making more money in America than Nick Clegg.

My mother would know what to say. She’d say they have let the Queen, the royal family and the country down with their selfish shenanigans – a triple infraction from which there can be no coming back. And I suspect the Queen would agree with her. I would only add that it really doesn’t matter all that much what they do. They’ve made their choice, now they, and the Palace, must live with the consequences. The rest of us, fortunately, don’t have to.