AMANDA PLATELL: I know the sad and cynical truth about why Harry and Meghan’s offer over Los Angeles fires has gone up in flames

As soon as the flames from California’s devastating fires began destroying homes and lives, Meghan and Harry came to the rescue.

They revealed on social media that they had opened the doors of their $29 million nine-bedroom mansion to “friends and loved ones.”

“A state of emergency has been declared,” the Sussexes said, adding: “As a friend, loved one or pets [sic] to evacuate and you can offer them a safe haven in your home, please do so. And be sure to contact any disabled or elderly neighbors to see if they need help evacuating.”

A magnanimous gesture to be applauded? Maybe.

But the sad truth is that many won’t see it that way. Because the Sussexes’ reputation means that some people now regard every public statement with deep cynicism.

In light of the way they have treated Meghan’s vulnerable and elderly father and refused to allow him to set foot in their country home or even meet his two grandchildren, their plea for people to protect loved ones and the elderly help a different complexion.

Considering that this very public expression of condolence coincided with Meghan’s new Netflix cooking series “With Love, Meghan” due out on January 15, on which her future earnings depend, many will see this as a money-making publicity ploy.

Meghan and Harry’s offer to help those affected by the fires may come from the heart. But their lack of popularity after destroying Harry’s family while capitalizing on their royal status is coloring people’s judgment.

That is why for many, their oh-so-generous gesture has already gone up in flames.

It can’t be true! Holly Willoughby has just bought an £8million mansion without a mortgage. But now HMRC has filed a winding-up petition against Roxy Media, the company she co-founded with her husband. If her expression is frozen when she appears on Dancing On Ice 2025, that could explain it…

Rochdale shame

Could there be a greater example of the incompetence of our justice system than the leader of Rochdale’s grooming gang Qari Abdul Rauf – who was jailed in 2012 for raping and trafficking girls and released after serving two and a half years of his sentence of six years – still living in Britain?

Amazingly, he finds himself in the same city as his victims. This is despite assurances that he would be returned to Pakistan after losing deportation appeals in 2020 and 2022.

Sickening enough for us, but incredible hell for the families of the girls he raped.

Nicole children!

The director of Nicole Kidman’s new film Babygirl – in which she plays a married, middle-aged executive who has a highly erotic affair with a much younger intern – claims it is a coming-of-age feminist film that tells the truth about women’s orgasms depicts women.

Nicole says she had to fake great sex so many times during filming that she suffered from orgasm fatigue.

Maybe that explains her enigmatic smile when she appeared at the Golden Globes.

Absolutely heartbreaking for Caroline Flack’s mother Christine that five years after her daughter’s suicide, she is seeking answers about how it happened and who was to blame in a Disney+ documentary.

The sad truth is that there is no one to blame when someone is so deeply lost in despair that he or she takes his or her own life. I know. My Grandpa Pop ended his life jumping to his death. Not even the love of his family could save him.

++Westminster Wars++

• Our shortest-serving Prime Minister claims it is ‘false and defamatory’ and tries to stop Keir Starmer from ever saying ‘Liz Truss crashed the economy’ again. Good luck with that, because all he has to say is that Liz the Lettuce crashed the economy (the Economist magazine said that after just seven days in power – the shelf life of a lettuce – she had caused political unrest and that it became a running joke). Or is that disparaging to lettuce?

• Starmer’s big idea to ‘hit people smugglers where it hurts’ is to introduce financial sanctions and freeze their bank accounts. What naivety! As if criminals – who operate all over the world and whose business of smuggling migrants across the Channel was worth more than £150 million last year alone – have stashed their millions in a bank on the High Street.

After seeing Demi Moore in The Substance, for which she won Best Actress at the Globes, I’m sure the judges were laughing. She uses a drug to create a youthful version of herself.

In her nude scenes that rotate as the drug takes effect, we are reminded of Demi’s own success in looking beautifully ageless at 62. Women would kill for the name of her plastic surgeon – if she has one!

Good news for my moggie Ted, known as Teddy when he’s behaving, that experts say it’s best for cats’ well-being to have a one- or two-syllable name. I’d say it’s better to stick with just one, like Ted and his predecessors Jim, Ron and Reg. All can be expanded to the more affectionate term when they aren’t tearing up the bank.

All you need is… The Beatles

A summary of the moments we would most like to experience is led by England’s World Cup victory in 1966, followed by seeing The Beatles between 1963 and 1966. For me it’s The Beatles, even though I’m six to nine years old would have been and lived in Oz when our family would get together and shout and scream while watching them on TV.

• All five living US presidents attended the funeral of ex-president Jimmy Carter – Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump – with their wives, except Michelle Obama. She was on vacation in Hawaii. Was it because she had to sit next to Trump? Whatever. It was an insult to the Carter family. The apparently caring left can be cruel when it suits them.

• Meanwhile, Melania Trump will pocket part of a $40 million deal with Amazon for a documentary about her. If she talks about why she supported her husband after his affair with Stormy Daniels, that alone would be worth millions of viewers.

Last Wednesday was Megxit’s fifth anniversary. Many commentators at the time gleefully predicted that this would mean the end of the royal family. Five years later, the monarchy is, in Meghan’s words, not only surviving but thriving, while the Sussexes’ popularity here and around the world has soared.

Hammond ignored warning signs

Top Gear’s Richard Hammond and Mindy, his wife of 23 years, have split.

Friends say she kicked him out and he lives in a converted barn on their £7 million estate, which she wants to keep in the divorce settlement.

Who can blame her? In 2006 he had a near-death accident. She nursed him until he recovered and went through depression, begging him not to risk his life again.

Still, he had another high-speed crash in 2017 and just managed to escape the car before it caught fire.

Sad for them and their two daughters that he put his macho ego over his family, but she did warn him.