Why I can see a busy future for Meghan’s fact- checker!

HER poise and passion in front of a camera or microphone are surely unequalled in royal history. But these gifts haven’t blinded the Duchess of Sussex to the fact that she, like the rest of mankind, is fallible.

Indeed, I can reveal that, in a characteristic display of professionalism, Meghan has been employing a ‘fact-checker’ for her Spotify podcast series, Archetypes, which resumes today, having been suspended immediately after the Queen’s death.

Meghan hasn’t chosen a run-ofthe-mill recruit but a young and highly talented American writer, Nicole Pasulka, whose interests closely mirror her own.

‘I write about criminal justice, activism, race, music, business, queer culture, and gender,’ Pasulka alerts visitors to her website, which mentions that she is ‘currently writing a book’.

In fact, her book was published this summer — entitled: How You Get Famous.

Lest the uninitiated leap to the conclusion that it’s a fictionalised account of an attractive, mixedrace, American actress being catapulted to international attention by marrying the younger son of a king, they should think again.

It is, instead, ‘a deep dive into New York city’s underground drag scene’, and has been praised as ‘an engaging book that will appeal to scholars of gender as well as anyone with an interest in queer culture’. There is currently no suggestion that Pasulka’s role will extend beyond the podcast.

That’s a shame. A fact-checker could cut through the confusion which has occasionally — and unfortunately — followed some of Meghan’s statements. For example, in an interview with American magazine The Cut, she recalled chatting to a South African cast member of The Lion King at the film’s 2019 London premiere.

‘He said: “I just need you to know: When you married into this family, we rejoiced in the streets the same we did when Mandela was freed from prison,”’ Meghan recalled.

Yet Dr John Kani, the only South African cast member, has pointed out that he has never met Meghan and wasn’t at the premiere. Of course, as the late Queen memorably put it on another occasion, ‘recollections may vary’.