At least Meg won’t be kept awake by the No 52 bus!

S

O HARRY and Meghan have forked out for their own home for the first time in either of their lives.

It’s a major event, knowing that the place in Montecito, California – unlike poor neglected Frogmore – actually belongs to you and you can do with it exactly what you want. You don’t have to feel responsible to anyone else.

I doubt anybody forgets the excitement of that first night in a home they own. Mine was spent weeping till daylight. The bedroom window was on the ground floor looking on to a major West London road, with the No52 bus stop 10ft from my bed.

So excited was I by the possibility of owning this one-bedroom flat with a pocket kitchen and sliver of a bathroom that I hadn’t thought about what the traffic was going to sound like, surging throughout the night.

I didn’t sleep a wink, convinced that my entire future, with its 95 per cent mortgage, was condemned to sleeplessness. Of course, within days I was completely deaf to the noise and was able instead to focus my angst on the fact that the plywood kitchen floor was already showing damp patches.

Still, despite all its flaws, the place was mine and I’m sure the Sussexes are just as excited about theirs, even if it does have 16 bathrooms.

My Montecito source, aka my cousin James, who works as a realtor on that precise patch, says that on the scale of top-tier properties, their spend is relatively modest due to the £15 million discount they got on the

£26 million being asked three years ago.

At £11 million, it’s small beer compared to the most expensive house