This annus gets more horribilis
Is nothing sacred? Surely one must feel sorry for one’s monarch and the ritual of the Queen’s Christmas message. It may have to compete with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex recently signing a lucrative deal with Spotify to produce and host uplifting kindness and compassion podcasts, set to be released at Christmas.
Forget the post-prandial setting of the alarm clock to make sure the loyal subject doesn’t miss the broadcast of the Queen’s message. That setin-stone spoken epistle is at risk of becoming old hat, or old crown.
Harry and Meghan’s podcast is apparently specially designed to uplift audiences around the world with a narrative of sharedmemories and challenged experiences that shaped 2020.
What aminute – hasn’t that been the consistent theme of the Queen’s message: to reflect upon the events of the past year and offer amessage of hope through shared experience?
And if anyone’s got the right to call 2020 the annus horribilis to top all annus horribulises, it would be Her Royal Highness, who reintroduced the phrase into our lexicon back in 1992. Obviously, this a clear-cut case of acute copycatus.
Talk about the Santa Barbararians at the gate and ‘‘trumping’’, if you’ll excuse the expression, the Queen at Christmas. Clearly the Sussexes like to make a splash and will keep making them, till they tsunami the firm back in Old Blighty.
At least Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson had the decency to slink off to the Bahamas after he voluntarily abdicated and split from the royals. The Sussexes gave lip-service to wanting the quiet life, but they have sought the limelight in a blaze of publicity ever since they quit for California.
After news of this latest deal with Spotify, British broadcaster Piers Morgan referred to the Sussexes as ‘‘those godawful grifters’’ and feigned puking into a rubbish bin on hearing excerpts from a short and sanctimonious podcast in which the couple aired their intention of becoming global dogooders.
Now the Sussexes are branching out and gunning for the Queen’s top spot in a royal Yuletide TV ratings war.
The portrayal of the Queen in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown as a dutiful but cold monarch was the cue for the royal family to circle the wagons and present a solid front to those gullible enough to take the work of fiction as the gospel truth.
To have a grandson whom you once looked upon with such warmth and favour now working with Netflix, the purveyors of a fiction that painted you in such an unflattering light, could only be seen as grossly disloyal.
One of the downsides of living a very long life is that you get to see the history, or herstory, of yourself while you’re still drawing breath. The Queen seems boring because she put devotion to duty at the centre of her life and hasn’t wavered from it.
Residual score-settling on behalf of his mother might be at the heart of Harry’s defection from the family bosom, but one wonders what talents he will bring to the podcasts of this glorified Hide-Hi! project.
‘‘Tune in, folks, to hear tellwhat a real-life duke learnt in the military and watch a duchess actress teach yoga!’’
Will there be an appetite for watching the Sussexesmaking a quid out of condescending to interview the common man for stories of pain, suffering and heroism? Even The Crown would give that episode amiss.