Nearly exactly six years ago, Prince Harry touched down in Sydney and the city succumbed to a bad case of Aitchmania. The dashing HRH was in town to drum up some noise about the next Invictus Games and such was his lure that crowds braved truly bucketing rain to see him.
Prince Harry hugs 97 year old Daphne Dunne during a walkabout in the torrential rain in Sydney on June 7, 2017. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Things looked like they were only on the up for the royal: He had a fabulous girlfriend who promised to be the best thing to happen to the royal family since they stopped marrying their first cousins and his charity work was going gangbusters.
It’s just a bit depressing when you contrast that Harry with the man of today with a new report throwing up a bevy of claims that make him sound less like someone freed from a lifelong cage and more like a teenager who could do with a shower, stern talking to and a day job.
Claims like he games until the wee hours; that he has not one but two hotel rooms he allegedly ‘escapes’; that there is a “chasm” between he and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex over fame versus privacy; and that his friends back in London want about as much to do with him as Queen Camilla wants to sit through a slam poetry festival.
Oh, and there’s also the pesky question of whether the Sussexes’ ‘cheapness’ might have played a part in last week’s Escape from Midtown paparazzi chase that the police don’t seem to think was a chase.
Meghan and Harry have had an eventful seven days. Picture: MEGA/GC Images
On paper, Harry now has everything he seemed to desperately want: He had escaped from indentured royal work, has a family of his own, and even Hummingbird feeder to keep him out of Meghan’s hair.
He can ride bikes! Hike! Run barefoot along the beach with the wind in his remaining hair! (Actually, nothing stronger than a mild breeze might be the best bet.)
But this paradiscal vision does not quite tally with what The Telegraph’sCamilla Tominey has reported, with her instead painting a picture of life inside the be Court of Sussex.
Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising assertion is that the Duke, despite co-owning a nine bedroom faux Tuscan estate with a guesthouse, has a couple of hotel hidey holes away from home and where no one asks him to take the bins out.
Tominey writes of the Sussexes: “Such is their independence from each other that the owner of a leading hotel chain in Montecito recently told The Daily Telegraph they have a room set aside for Harry where he occasionally stays on his own.”
Not only that but Harry has “been known to stay” two hours away at Los Angeles’ premiere A-list members club San Vicente bungalows. A source at the uber exclusive joint told Tominey: “That seems to be his escape place.”
Tominey writes that “Harry has apparently stayed there after attending Barry’s Bootcamp, a high-octane cardio fitness class, at the nearby Beverly Centre.”
The image of Harry enjoying a bit of a run on a Barry’s treadmill followed by a club sandwich for one in a hotel room while CNN plays noiselessly in the background is hardly the powerful, emotionally fulfilling image many had of what his brave new life would be like post-Megxit.
Camilla Tominey paints a sad picture: of Harry’s new life. Picture: Dan Charity/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Interestingly, it wasn’t only the Telegraph who has reported that Harry has these bolthole hotel rooms but The Sun too.
A representative for Harry quickly popped up to refute the claim, simply saying “This is not true,” but it’s worth noting that both pieces remain unchanged.
Interesting, indeed.
Other details offered up by Tominey go a long way to explaining, as she writes, why the 38-year-old “appears to be struggling to find his way”.
For example, is the former army captain getting enough shut eye? Harry has been “apparently staying up late into the night, gaming”.
Then there is the matter of just how lonely Aitch might be these days. We all know why his father King Charles and brother Prince William might have blocked him from the family chat but it does not sound like his old mates are there to fill the gap and provide the sort of emotional succour and Schitt’s Creek memes an adult man needs.
“Nobody really speaks to him any more and even the people who have remained by his side have lately begun to fall away because he is so consistently negative,” an insider has told the Telegraph. “He’s often complaining and rarely asks after others … Now they just see him as completely lost.”
OK, but he’s got his army mates right?
Not according to one former military colleague who told Tominey: “No one in the forces has got any time for him at all, which is such a shame because he was hugely popular. You can blame Meghan, but he’s brought a lot of it on himself.”
Prince Harry’s army mates don’t see much of him anymore. Picture: Matt Dunham/AFP
Friday last week marked five years since Harry and Meghan tied the knot and the royal family failed to not smirk and titter their way through Bishop Michael Curry’s loquacious sermon. Today, the couple who, as Meghan once described as moving “like salt and pepper … always move together,” a sickly phrase if ever there was one, are “frazzled,” a friend has said, having two small kids.
While the Sussexes “are really happy together and live this idyllic life” the friend also told the Telegraph that “they’ve been through a lot and I think they’ve both felt quite ground down by it all”.
Which is entirely understandable. Launching a crusade against a 1000-year-old institution and antagonising one’s entire family all while having to find the cash to pay for a score of beefy bodyguards lacking necks must really take a toll.
Meanwhile, over at Page Six, a report has raised the possibility that the Sussexes, like people with mortgages the world over, have been doing some economising.
A source has said: “Harry and Meghan’s people called The Carlyle ahead of the trip and asked for a discounted room, and the hotel said no.
“If they had just paid up and got a hotel in the first place, this supposed ‘dangerous’ paparazzi chase around town would never have happened. They would have been driven back to the Carlyle, been photographed going inside and that would have been the end of it.
“They should have just gotten a hotel for the safety of everyone. Instead, they were cheap and wanted a free place to stay.”
Reports suggest Harry and Meghan were too cheap to pay for a hotel. Picture: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Just what state might the Sussexes bank accounts be in? On one hand, Harry’s tell-all memoir managed to not only teach a generation of blokes not to rub expensive face cream on their little majors but it sold millions of copies.
Also, he and Meghan are the proud owners of deals with Netflix and Spotify reportedly worth close to the $200 million mark.
Except, there is a ‘but’ here big enough to drive a Sussex-style convoy of SUVs through.
A second season of Meghan’s Archetypes podcast has yet to be confirmed and nearly six months on from the couple’s Netflix six-part “global event”, the streaming giant has not announced any new projects with the couple.
(Harry has had a documentary about the Invictus Games cooking for years now. No release date has been revealed.)
Nor has Penguin Random House popped up to trumpet a new book from either Harry or Meghan.
The deals they have might be worth about the GDP of Wales but the Times has previously reported that according to “industry insiders,” the couple was “likely” to be on a retainer of somewhere around $1.5 to $2 million, earning more per series they make.
While Meghan has signed with uber talent agency WME, Harry did not, begging the question of where his career might go from here. What does or will he do all day before it’s Playstation-o’clock?
Speaking in New York last week to collect her award, just before the supposed paparazzi chase that derailed everything, Meghan said “You can be the visionary of your own life.”
It’s hard to imagine that Harry of 2018, so wonderfully in love and seemingly having found happiness, would ever envision a life cut off from his family, playing Halo late into the evening and “completely lost” in the eyes of his mates.
Let’s just hope things are not truly dire and that he’s on a first-name basis with his local Pizza Hut delivery driver and has started wearing Lynx.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
