Sussex fan Scobie’s firm slides £17k into the red
CHEERLEADING for Prince Harry and Meghan doesn’t appear to be very lucrative. Facing action to close his publishing business, royal biographer Omid Scobie has filed financial details for three consecutive years — and they don’t make happy reading.
Despite all the hype surrounding his sycophantic book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their decision to quit royal duties, Finding Freedom, it turns out that Scobie’s business is in the red. The firm, MeYou Ltd, faced a ‘compulsory strike-off’ after Scobie, 40, failed to provide legally required financial information since 2019.
Late last week, he filed three sets of accounts in one go — and the latest reveals a deficit of £17,000.
While his hagiographic book went into cringe-making detail about Harry’s romance with the American former actress, his company accounts for 2021 comprise just two pages, with only one containing any numbers.
They report just £4,000 in assets and bills of £20,000 due to be paid within the year. The deficit in his capital and reserves is an increase in the £15,840 reported for 2020. While in 2019 accounts it was £2,607 in the black.
Failure to have provided financial details would have resulted in a fine of £1,500 for accounts that are more than six months overdue, according to Companies House. If a firm is struck off compulsorily, all its assets can be seized by the Government.
A former writer on the celebrity gossip magazine Heat, Scobie is not a details man. In August 2020, he told The Times he had ‘just turned 33’. Then, he said he was 38. Companies House stated that he was born in July 1981, making him 39, at that time. Scobie, who’s royal editor of U.S. website Harper’s Bazaar, was among those who whipped up criticism of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s tour of the Caribbean last month, highlighting alleged public relations moments that smacked of ‘colonialism’, such as cropped images of the couple greeting fans through a fence in Trench Town, Jamaica.
Scobie could not be reached for comment.