Don’t be mean to your dad, Meghan – Harry won’t like it

FIRST, let me say I loved, loved, loved your two wedding dresses. I think you have the best legs since Cyd Charisse. But I really do believe you’re about to make the biggest mistake of your life.

I understand your dad is a bit of a wally. He should probably have kept quiet about the fact you didn’t send him a Father’s Day card. Not staged those cheesy fake photos. He shouldn’t really tell the world he is nowhere near as bad as Donald Trump, so the Queen has no excuse not to meet him. He probably shouldn’t have blurted out on live breakfast TV what he talked about on the phone with son-in-law Harry, or how keen you are to have kids.

But let’s face it. He is probably just excited. All parents can be embarrassing. He clearly loves you, and he is clearly reaching out, with open arms.

And remember that you were the one who foisted notoriety on him. He didn’t ask for the limelight. He needed some media training and a minder with the wedding coming up. He got neither.

Never mind that ‘courtiers are at a loss what to do with him’. If you are such an independent woman, why don’t you take charge; why don’t you decide? And why not give him a cottage – you’ll have enough to go around. But cutting him out of your life completely, as was suggested in one newspaper report yesterday, would be just plain mean, and not worthy of a humanitarian: remember, he is a human, too. Being churlish and vindictive is not a trait Harry would find remotely attractive, given he seems to be gracious with everyone.

You can’t just swap your real dad for a more glamorous, connected one. He spoke of his pride at seeing Charles walk you down the aisle, but I’ll bet his own absence stuck like a knife in that bear-like girth.

No fathers are perfect, especially when it comes to daughters. Mine certainly wasn’t. Unlike your father, mine had movie-star looks and a public school education: in my family, he was known as the toff; in his village, everyone called him ‘the Colonel’. But he was born in 1921, so had no idea about hugging, or talking.

My dad was conservative with money, too: when I was a student and had bought a few basics, he wrote me a letter, demanding I pay his Access bill. But every time I was travelling, he would plot the route on a map, call me up and tell me that the A14 or M11 is ‘the most dangerous road in England’ and why don’t I ‘just stay home’. When I was off to LA for work in the early 1980s, he wrote me a letter, saying the city was ‘full of gangs, and no place for my Lizzie’. He’d put air in my tyres, too.

I only really got to know him when he was in his 80s and suffering from cancer. For the first time, in his hospital bed, he paid me a compliment. I saw him cry, too. ‘Tell the girls I’m sorry about this,’ he said to my mum on his death bed. So he did think of us and love us. He just didn’t show it that often.

So you need to be the bigger person and reach out. Don’t be tempted to text: you’re not 12. Don’t put out an official press release stating ‘I have always cared for my father’. That’s passive aggressive. And tell him you love him like you love your beagle; trust me, a father’s love is just as unconditional.

You still have time to pick up the phone. I don’t. Let him know what he means to you, but keep it casual. Tell him the tyres in your wedding-day E-type Jag are looking a little low…