Another day, another desperate Montecito dollar. This time with jam on it!
SLICE me a loaf and spread the bread of heaven with the butter of celebration. in the week that we learn Prince Harry has lost another court case and taken further steps towards cutting all formal ties with the UK, the first product from American Riviera Orchard has been rolled out and it is — ta da! — a jar of strawberry jam.
Are these two events connected? if you consider that one is a heritage fruity pulp boiled until thick, a hot mess that has taken the pith but is still capable of giving people the pip and that the other is a jar of jam — then the coincidences are too strong to ignore.
And this is not just any jam! each jar of the Duchess of Sussex’s ARO jam is topped with a darling unbleached muslin lid tied with a charmingly rustic piece of authentic jam maker’s string, la ficelle du confiturier, as Meghan no doubt explains to her dim mompreneur friends who haven’t acquired a bit of european cultural polish like wot she has.
each of the 50 jars has been numbered, in the manner of limitededition art prints, and sent out to friends, influencers and ViPs. every jar is swaddled in a linenlined basket surrounded by giant lemons and frondy sprigs of elderflower — all of which must have cost more than the actual jam.
Mine hasn’t arrived yet — it’s probably stuck in customs. Or there is no room on Meghan’s most wanted freebie list, packed with noted jam lovers such as Mr S. Spielberg, Mr Bob Disney, Oprah, elmo, Big Bird and the assorted wives of Hollywood hotshots who might, just might, prove useful in future.
Now look. Do you honestly believe i am going to write about every single item that the Duchess of Sussex sells on her American Riviera Orchard brand website? Do you really think i am so shallow? So downright mean? Then you are completely correct. i am all that — and less.
FOR while Meghan’s upscale marketables might well turn out to be unoriginal, they will always be unignorable. And i am going to love all of it. Bring on the sculpted candles and the charity salad dressings and the foraged- shell napkin rings.
What will the hero product be? Yuzu marshmallows? calligraphy pen kits for writing encouraging messages on bananas to cheer up sex workers? live, laugh, love, ladies! You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow!
it has been four long years since Peter Phillips appeared in a television advert flogging Jersey milk (‘This is what i drink’) to the notoriously lactose- unfriendly chinese market. For royal fans starved of such cheapening, grisly sights, American Riviera Orchard is the shopping event of the century; a celebrity marketing moment bigger even than civilian Sylvester Stallone’s tinned High
PRINCESS ANNE gave Paul Hollywood his MBE this week. Which just goes to show that there is no shame in public life anymore. You can, like Hollywood, suddenly up and leave your shocked wife, run off with your Mexican chef television co-star, then scandalously date a barmaid half your age — and still receive one of the highest honours in the land.
I say highest. While lots of very worthy people receive MBEs, it is still the first rung on the gong ladder. How interesting that Hollywood languishes down there on step one, while GBBO stalwarts Mary Berry and Prue Leith are both grand Dames. Arise Sir Paul of Soggy Bottom? It’s not going to happen any time soon.
Protein Puddings, Katy Perry launching her corn Popchips range (‘it’s my dream snack’) or the Duchess of York flogging cranberry juice and teapots on U.S. television back in the 1990s.
The labels state Meghan’s jam has been ‘sourced in Montecito’ but listen jamsters, that could mean anything. Sourced from a factory, sourced from a farm, sourced from the bruised fruit bargain bins in the Montecito Tesco.
Was the jam grown, harvested and handpicked in a local strawberry patch? Did the duchess herself hull the berries, measure the sugar, check in the pectin and skim the scum? There is no detail — and vagueness in the provenance of perishable goods is never an encouraging sign. if Meghan were to sell the jams as opposed to forcing them upon strangers, the products would have to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is a whole different jam game.
Perhaps, we will learn more when the two new Netflix documentary series about the Sussexes are broadcast next year. in one, Meghan will share the ‘joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining and friendship’ — most of which she is demonstrably unqualified to do.
THE second series finds Harry giving ‘ unprecedented access to the world of professional polo’ — the exclusive, elitist sport few people care about outside polo circles.
Maybe the Sussexes could combine the two documentary strands and have Meghan making sandwiches for some thunderously handsome Argentinian polo players while writing encouraging words on their bananas, too. That would bring in the viewers.
Meanwhile, this ambitious pair of control freaks will be executively producing everything, from the polo shoots to the avocado-potting sessions to the labels on the jars of strawberry delight; rolling out a carefully curated, highly sanitised, hugely commercialised version of their lives for public consumption and private profit.
Another day, another desperate Montecito dollar. This time with jam on it.