Harry loves changing the script
We were sat there watching The Crown, just the two of us. When it first came on, the entire family all got together to watch it, but that didn’t last very long. Not when there’s stuff about your Gran’s consort playing away and that sort of thing. Not when they’re sat there right next to you. Never mind your aunt in her underwear in bed with your stepmother’s ex.
So anyway we’re sat there sat there watching The Crown, just the two of us, and I’m saying this business about old Uncle Dickie being in a coup is news to me and where did they dig up this stuff about Margaret, I didn’t know half of it.
Meghan gives me her ‘‘are you really asking’’ face and says: ‘‘It’s just a script. You can put anything in a script.’’
Obvious, really. But it was a sort of revelation. You can put anything in a script.
I said to her that really when you thought about it, everything we do is following a script. She said well of course.
And I said: ‘‘You can put anything in a script.’’
She said: ‘‘Yes. Except when it comes to being a woman of colour in the monarchy.’’
I said that was a bit OTT. She gave me that look again. Then she asked how else to explain how ‘‘when a white duchess hugs her baby bump it’s adorable and when I do it I’m obsessed and need to get over myself’’. She had a quick half-dozen more examples. I said well she had a point.
It was about then we looked at each other and said: ‘‘You can put anything in a script.’’
Next thing you know we’re all over the news and Meghan and the boy are in Canada, and we’re working out what happens next.
Of course people had their jokes. We’d get a flat in Greenock and I’d find a plastering job and Meghan would do some part-time bagging at the supermarket and well yes, one’s life is somewhat privileged. But that’s where we are. So what will be in the script?
First, don’t be appalling. No partying with sex traffickers, no molesting young girls, no racism, no being friends with Nazis before and during the course of a world war. Maybe a bit less gin than Margaret.
Maybe don’t have any misgivings if, after you abandon ship, the monarchy that props up the class system and everything that’s wrong with that crumbles a little bit.
Mostly it would be nice to be able to look back on a life of advantage and say: we did something useful. All the world has problems, it would be nice to try to solve a few.
The family tends to put its name to the big problems: endangered animals, youth poverty, that sort of thing. Great stuff, but we’re thinking: who’s there to look after the smaller things?
That’s the touch Meghan has: an eye for for the shy person in the studio audience who needs a little bit of help. Not all heroes wear capes, she says. Even if you can’t be the sort of Superman who flies through the sky you can still be the one who walks across the room to ask if you can help.
In America, for example, we’d leave it to other people to deal with Trump, but we could definitely take Gwyneth aside for a helpful word about her candles.
And in New Zealand right now, people have been collecting little stickers for free drinking glasses at New World. But now they’ve got enough for wine goblets, there are none left. You should read what they have to say: ‘‘irate’’ ‘‘enraged’’ ‘‘compensation’’ ‘‘unethical’’. I can see us being the quiet voice of reason there.
I can see online that there are loads of people with problems like this who are unbelievably irate and want it sorted. I can totally see us being that kind of change you want to see in the world.
So cheers Netflix. An imaginary show with an imaginary scenario has set us free.
I just wish we could rewrite it so Mum stayed inside the Ritz that night.