Just when it seemed like the Sussexes didn’t have a friend in London, just when it seemed like Prince Harry would be shunned by his entire family every time he came to the UK: a one-man plague to be avoided like a contagion, dodged like a puddle, dodged like a bullet: something extraordinary happened. The Spencers enter.
The late Princess of Wales’ younger brother Earl Spencer, her older sister Lady Jane Fellowes and other diverse family members came together to support Prince Harry at his Invictus Games anniversary service at St Paul’s on Wednesday.
Ruddy-faced, snowy-haired, and thick-calfed, the elder Spencers entered the cathedral like a county farmer and his clan visiting a county fair to give the sugar beets a good shake.
And Prince Harry couldn’t have been more delighted to see them. Inside the great cathedral, in almost biblical scenes of redemption, he embraced the Spencers, kissed them, fell on their necks like the return of the prodigal son.
In fact, we haven’t seen Harry this happy in public since he went down the water slide at Thorpe Park all those years ago. However, beneath the bucolic bonhomie and cheerful smiles, a thunder of advancing hooves could be detected, if you listened closely. Because the Spencers were a cavalry that galloped to the rescue.
Prince Harry hugs his uncle Earl Spencer at his Invictus Games anniversary service at St Paul’s on Wednesday.
One wonders what King Charles and Prince William might think of this high-profile intervention, which has the potential to cast them in a cold and unflattering light by comparison; from the eternal bad cops to the Spencerian good cops, writes Jan Moir
And you know what? I’m so glad they were there for him. It’s too sad to think of Harry flying here, restlessly offsetting his carbon footprint, clutching his little box of medals, tapping his fingers at his temples, his anxiety levels rising as the threat of the dog bowl and the road less traveled They come closer to meet each other. him once again.
Spencer’s support is perhaps the least we should expect from loving relatives in a complicated family situation. Like delivering balloons and gifts on birthdays or cheering up the unsuccessful nephew who makes a pig’s ear while playing at being a sheep in a nativity scene; That’s what uncles are for, this is the code of the aunt’s way.
One wonders what King Charles and Prince William might think of this high-profile intervention, which has the potential to cast them in a cold and unflattering light by comparison; the eternal bad cops to the Spencerian good cops.
Yet who despises whom in these endless, exhausting skirmishes of real transatlantic slights and misspeaking? The truth is that if his father and his brother don’t see him and support his favorite causes when he visits London, then Prince Harry only has himself to blame. Who could trust him again?
That’s one of the reasons I don’t see the Spencers as heroes here, but also not as a unit that wants to choose a side or a fight. After all, being there for Harry isn’t a sacrifice for them.
The Spencers don’t have to forgive the Sussexes or accommodate their irritated intransigence or just sulk and put up with it. Because Prince Harry has no beef with his Uncle Charles, nor has he ever hoisted his grumpy gravy boat to pour the usual sauce of grievance on the lovely Aunt Jane.
He hasn’t accused any of them, or anyone in his immediate family, of being racists, bullies, snitches, liars, and completely stinking rotten. He has not criticized or betrayed them in books, podcasts or television interviews seen by millions of people around the world. He hasn’t caused damage to his family’s reputation, like he has done elsewhere, ahem.
He even thanked Earl Spencer and Lady Jane in the acknowledgments section of his autobiography, Spare, an honor granted to absolutely no one in his inner circle.
So his support was nice, as was the small crowd of blimps that cheered him on as well. Not everyone hates Prince Harry for smearing his family (and, by extension, the entire country) as a racist backwater full of repressive types incapable of seeing the bigger picture or waking up and smelling the roses, like him and his saint. wife.
Speaking of which, it’s a shame the Duchess of Sussex wasn’t at Harry’s side this week, petting him like a puppy, holding his hand and sharing the faint glow of this rare display of public popularity.
It’s certainly not like Meghan to miss an opportunity as ostentatious as this; He usually appears at all Invictus ceremonies as a regimental mascot on parade. He brings out the inner drummer in him, gives him a faux-royal glow, so why the inexplicable absence?
Spencers or no Spencers, the Duchess doesn’t have a suitable excuse to avoid the UK this week and the truth is, she doesn’t even need one anymore. The cavalry is gone, the dust has settled and we all know where we stand.
Next stop, Nigeria. And I just can’t wait for it.
The starry speculum
Hello Kim Kardashian, are you on Ozempic? How I wish Barbra Streisand had been at the Met Ball, adding a touch of boomer candor to this absurd event.
Many of the celebrities couldn’t walk in their silly dresses, others wore suits that covered less than a five-denier fishnet sock with a hole in the toe.
Kim Kardashian wore a steel corset that gave her a 19-inch waist and made her look like a speculum at the Met Ball on Monday.
In fact, the entire event was an exercise in ugliness. None uglier than Miss Kardashian, who wore a steel corset that gave her a 19-inch waist and made her look like a speculum.
Bound like a silver sausage, Kimmy could barely walk and had trouble breathing, but she felt a strange, sickening pride in her suffering.
Sometimes it seems that women have barely made any progress.
Oh Bambie, you are an imp.
This weekend the Eurovision Song Contest takes place. Ireland’s entry is a non-binary singer named Bambie Thug (pictured), a self-described “witch” who uses They/Them/Fae pronouns who will perform a black magic-inspired song and dance routine celebrating the rituals of satanic sacrifice. . Where’s Dana with her snowdrops and daffodils when you need her most?
Bambie is already angry because the Eurovision organizers made them change the pro-Palestinian messages they had painted on their bodies because they were too political. You have been warned.
Ireland’s entry is a non-binary singer called Bambie Thug, a self-described “witch” who will perform a black magic-inspired song that celebrates satanic sacrifice rituals.
This whole Garrick Club fiasco is a gigantic exercise in virtue signaling all around. The women who attacked the claret-stained old boobies first.
Men who knew it was a men-only club when they joined in the 19th century and now present themselves as social justice warriors because they allowed women to join.
And those who have introduced accelerated memberships for people like Joanna Lumley. No self-respecting woman would want anything to do with the garbage dump. What’s wrong with single-sex clubs anyway? Sometimes men and women need a break from each other. If you don’t like that, go somewhere else.
Hallowed be your brand
In a river with water up to his waist, an adult man is baptized and surrenders to the arms of Jesus. Further down, on the banks of that same river, a woman crosses the Parliament room and gives herself into the arms of Keir Starmer.
It is not difficult to draw a parallel between Russell Brand’s sudden conversion to Christianity and Natalie Elphicke’s defection to the Labor Party. Both will undoubtedly produce a multitude of raised eyebrows, snorts of derision, and some variation on the theme of who they’re trying to fool.
Elphicke has become a political joke, that’s the end of it, but if Brand were serious about his spiritual cleansing, surely it would be a private matter?
If Brand were serious about his spiritual cleansing, surely it would be a private matter?
It cannot have escaped your notice that there are many benefits to be gained from a positive makeover in the run-up to any potential criminal trial, but is he really a changed man?
“I love to fuck,” he once said in an interview. “There is a hot tub in my house for very good reasons, and none of them spiritual.”
Maybe he should have been baptized there?
Just a thought.
Pampered protesters on unstable ground
Hey, listen, how are the 17 Princeton hunger strikers getting along? Not very well, I suspect. One told reporters that she was “literally shaking” because she was hungry and “immunocompromised.”
She went on to accuse the elite American university of “physically weakening” her and her hunger-striking classmates.
‘This is absolutely unfair: we are starving. We are physically exhausted. As you can see, I’m literally shaking right now,’ she shouted, acting as if she were a prisoner of war rather than a free citizen who had made a personal decision.
Surely only a group of newly whitewashed high-privilege academics would think it appropriate to starve by choice to show solidarity with the many thousands of people in Gaza who are actually starving.
Protesters refuse to eat and drink, except water, until their Ivy League university meets their demands, which include committing to a sinister-sounding “total academic and cultural boycott of Israel” and granting a “complete amnesty.” facing criminal and disciplinary charges against all student protesters.
Shouldn’t protesting students accept that there will be difficulties, sanctions and consequences as a result of their actions? And also accept (I know it’s difficult) that if you go on a hunger strike there is a good chance that you will be hungry? While they complain in their culturally appropriate keffiyehs, it’s hard to take these clowns seriously.