The Sussexes show they can stand on their own two feet

TODAY I have an important message to impart... and I am going to do so fully clothed. I had considered asking the editor to publish my comments with an accompanying shot of me in a bikini lying by a pool, but I do realise some of you may be reading this over breakfast. All will be revealed. Well, not literally.

It is easy to poke fun at Kylie Jenner. For those who do not know her, she is one of the youngest of the Kardashian/ Jenner clan who have made millions out of being famous.

Well, to be fair to Kylie, she has made hers out of a make- up range. Just short of a billion in fact. She sold 51 per cent to Coty for $ 650 million and all because young girls apparently want to look like her and be famous for being famous.

She is 23- years- old and attractive and, looking “sizzling”, according to the newspapers, posted poolside selfies to her 200 million Instagram followers while at the same time urging them to listen to her “important message” and register to vote in the upcoming US presidential elections.

It all seemed so incongruous. Only apparently it worked. Fifty thousand people did as she asked. Traffic to the registration site was up a staggering 1,500 per cent. So good on her. She is not the only one to have urged people to register, though after the TV debacle called the presidential debate I don’t envy them.

Actress Zendaya did the same, as did pop stars Rihanna and Taylor Swift. John Legend asked for people to register and then get out and vote “like our future depends on it”. All perfectly fine. Then Meghan Markle did the same and the world imploded with condemnation.

Firstly, like the aforementioned celebrities, she did not say who to vote for, though her criticisms of Donald Trump before meeting Harry are well documented. Saying she would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, she described him as misogynistic and divisive and I can’t see anything that would have changed her mind during the past four years. But you never know.

This time she was much more careful not to offer her support to either candidate, merely saying this was the “most important election of our lifetime”. Hardly earth shattering.

Trump responded with his usual charm by saying he was “not a fan”. Not only that but he wished Harry good luck “because he is going to need it”.

At home, one newspaper columnist described Harry as “henpecked” and yet he hadn’t commented on the election except to say he couldn’t vote in America and called for an end to negativity and hatred on social media. Not a bad message and hardly controversial. But “henpecked”?

How I wish I had a pound for every time someone presumed my husband was the just the same. I can assure you he is not. I have told him so. Of course, Piers Morgan weighed in with his one- man war against Meghan, suggesting “an intervention” to get Harry away from her was needed. Thank goodness she says she has learned to ignore “the noise out there”.

A poll in Tatler this week suggested 55 per cent believed the couple should not accept money from Prince Charles ( which is a bit rich considering many readers of that particular society bible may also have been given more than a helping hand from their parents). Well as far as I understand it, Harry and Meghan are free to say what they want.

Being Royal means that members of the Royal Family are not banned from being political, it’s just not expected. Charles is well known for having been just that on subjects that matter to him, from architecture and agriculture, to young people and climate change.

But here’s the thing. Harry and Meghan are no longer working Royals. That’s what they gave up. The title they still keep was given to them by the Queen as a wedding present. It was hers to bestow and hers to take away. Just as any parent can give whatever money they wish to their children. It is nothing to do with us. Prince Charles is a wealthy man in his own right from the Duchy of Cornwall. He probably makes more than he has given them from selling his biscuits. The point is it is his money.

Which brings me round to the biggest show of double standards of all. They shouldn’t have money given... but we are allowed also to say how they make it. And there is the suggestion that a big chunk of the £ 100m contract they have reportedly secured from Netflix depends on the couple allowing them to use footage of them at home.

Netflix are big players and getting bigger. They are hardly going to lay out that amount of cash for a few voiceovers on a nature series. What’s more, reality with the Royals is hardly a new concept. In 1969, the Royal Family allowed the cameras to follow them for a whole year in a television film brokered by Prince Phillip himself to make the Royal Family more relevant. Prince Charles has done the same. It’s Reality TV by another name.

And now it’s been suggested that perhaps this young couple shouldn’t be allowed to do so because it is for money.

Well, we said they should stand on their own two feet and that’s what they have done. We asked that they should pay their own way and that’s what they are doing.

We asked them to use their influence to achieve great things and they are trying to. Unless of course you feel talking about racism, or online bullying or even urging people to vote are not important issues.

I believe they are.

Keep going, Meghan and Harry. And remember if you sat back, did nothing or said nothing , you would be accused of being selfish, self- obsessed, spoilt and lazy.

I happen to think there is more to this young couple than that.

If they had sat back and did nothing they would be accused of being lazy, spoilt and selfish.