I was conflicted with the title – whether to call it The Power Behind the Drone or The Power Behind the Moan – after all, Harry changed from a bloke to a woke with mommy issues. He has become exceedingly boring in the process, spouting baby psychobabble at the merest whiff of a TV camera and patting his shoulders with crossed arms to deal with his emotions. Only Woody Allen can make more money out of his neuroses.
Kim & Ko better watch out. There’s a new show in town – Keeping Up With The Sussexes. It almost seems that ever since Megan sunk her determined little claws into the misunderstood ginge, she has been plotting her rise. First, there were all the unnecessary and acrimonious spats with her dad back in the States which were worthy of any scripted TV soapie where you have a beautiful heroine and a grumpy villain. That the villain is also her father, adds a certain spicey twist that is always sure to up the ratings.
She probably sensed early on that she would never be fully accepted by the Brits and, with Prince Hairy being only 6th in line, the nearest she would come to the throne was to sit on it when no one was looking. She did the next best thing. She parlayed all the slights and rejections, real and perceived, into fame and fortune. She knew how to navigate the showbiz system in the States and, in her Dupe, she had the perfect foil. He was carrying all the emotional scars of the tragic death of his adored mother as well as being a ginge, a recessive gene which she could dominate. Perhaps when someone in the Royal circle idly wondered what colour the baby would be, he/she was referring to the ginger bit.
They decamped to California and, before you knew it, she had copyrighted, or tried to, every variation of Archie and Sussex, had written and apparently self-illustrated a vapid kid’s book, and had signed up for an inside scoop with Oprah as well as deals with Spotify and Netflix. We have some idea of how the Netflix show will pan out. A dedicated videographic team has followed the pair to the Invictus Games which Harry founded. While Harry sports new-age bangles and twine thinges on his wrists and dresses casually, Megan has been changing her R50 – 100k outfits three times a day. She was also videoed giving away her R60k coat to someone to keep warm – probably cynically scripted.
We do know, though, how the Oprah thing panned out. She has made a fortune by exploiting the personal angsts, issues and banalities of people’s pathetic lives, but she was at her voracious and cynical best when hyping the Harry and Megan confessions. She played the racism card through lies, deceptions and distortions. She used headlines from Australian newspapers to show how racist the British press was, redrew minor or sub headlines to make them main headlines and quoted snippets of sentences completely out of context to promote the idea of racism. Finally, they sliced and diced the tapes to show a caring Oprah at her best as Megan and Harry laid bare their souls and committed emotional seppuku in front of millions of viewers.
Most of us can agree that Megan is quite a number. Which number I’m not too sure, but I go for a number 2 – it Suits her.