This TV Review first appeared in the Andersonstown News
Media event of the week for many in Britain and, I might add, many in Ireland, was That Interview – the one Oprah Winfrey conducted with Harry Windsor and his wife Meghan.
There’s a temptation in these matters to take side. Either you think Prince Charles is a sensitive, misunderstood soul and his da a cold-hearted tyrant, or that the da is a faithful Prince Consort and Charles is a hugely-rich talker to plants. I would respectfully put forward a third possibility – that all members of the Windsor family are mad or bad or both.
The explosive charge laid by Meghan during the interview was that a member of the royal family was keen to know what colour of skin the embryonic Archie was likely to have. Anyone to whom this came as a shock should seek medical help immediately. Since Britain is a racist society, it makes perfect sense that racism would exist in the family of the head of state.
Harry’s contribution to the interview was to reveal that his relationship with his da, Prince Charles, was fairly fractured came as no surprise. And as for those who clutched their bosom and reached for the smelling salts when he said his da Charles at one point stopped responding to his communication. – gimme a break.
Will this have damaged the Firm? It won’t have helped it. The British people, while largely racist themselves, are not keen on having that writ large in the royal family. They choose to think of them as free from the sins that are obvious among the general population. That Interview won’t have helped in that regard.
The final talking point from the interview was Harry’s claim that his brother and his father and his granny were all trapped in the royal family, forced to lead artificial lives. He’s half-right. When you get your toothpaste squeezed for you, you’re living an artificial life. But the idea that you’re trapped in it is like saying “I’m a millionaire, a slave to my sumptuous house, my splendid car, my expensive life-style”. If any of the royal family felt constrained, let alone imprisoned by their royal lives, the cell door isn’t locked. They can, as Harry has proved, walk away from the royal family with all its ‘duties’. But sure why would they? If your ‘work’ consists of smiling and saying a few words before sitting down to a sumptuous meal, or visiting Australia, Canada and other far-flung outposts of the empire, all in cossetted luxury, why would you give up your ‘work’? Except you figured you could make even more money by hanging out with the throng of celebrities living in Montecito , California, where Harry and his missus are living these days. Besides, official records make it clear that the royals ‘work’ an average of 84.5 days every year. Put another way: one-third of the working year they’re ‘working’, two-thirds of the working year they’re lolling about. So if Harry and his missus chose £10 million Montecito pad over 10-bedroom Frogmore Cottage, can you blame them for going from deep luxury to bottomless luxury?
Let us now, for the sake of the British people, say three Hail Marys that Elizabeth II is Elizabeth the Last.
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