Can Meghan and Harry stoop any lower?

Looking back on the Queen’s 1992 ‘annus horribilis’, the events involved – though surprising at the time – seem almost staid now. The wife of her favourite son was photographed canoodling with an American. Her daughter divorced. Her daughter-in-law was the co-creator of a frank book about the sorrows of her marriage to the Queen’s eldest son, and to top it off, Windsor Castle burnt down.

Three decades on, there’s a marked difference between the Queen’s awful year and that of her grandson, Prince Harry. The Queen’s year might have happened to anyone who had a bit of bad luck and a lot of castles. Harry and Meghan’s ‘annus horribilis’ is the direct result of them being, as that Spotify exec said, ‘fucking grifters’.

Last year, when the ‘grifters’ remark was made, we all thought the Sussexes could go no lower. This was the year of the South Park episode wherein two characters obviously meant to be H&M embark on a ‘Worldwide Privacy Tour’. It included a genuinely chilling moment when the Prince suggests to his wife that they might actually embrace a life of privacy and do good things rather than just talk about how good they are. When she doesn’t answer, he opens her head and finds that she is hollow, like a Russian doll.

Yet 2024 has, amazingly, been even worse for them. For starters, their supporters now look like bullies, no matter how much they present Meghan as a victim. Meghan’s obsession with Catherine, Princess of Wales, already seemed like a case of sour grapes. But when it transpired that the Princess was absent from public duties due to chemotherapy for cancer, Meghan’s supporters still spread nasty rumours.

Perhaps finally acknowledging that her acting career is over, Meghan has cooked up a lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, which sounds like a urinal cake.