JAN MOIR: If Big Willy really did push Little Harold over one can understand why

Just when I thought I was out, I’m back in. So says Michael Corleone in The Godfather III when he is dragged back into the family organized crime business after trying to do well.

Well, that’s exactly how I feel about Prince Harry. Just when I thought I was out, he pulls me back.

Just when I felt free to write about other current affairs, perhaps Rishi’s exciting plan for more math classes, or one of the ex-Marquess of Bath’s wives suing the estate over part of his will: here’s a mathematical equation for that, dear: 0 + 0 = 0 — Harry bursts into the narrative once more, blowing his trumpet of non-stop anguish, simply impossible to ignore.

This time, the spiteful baby man actually threw all his toys out of the royal stroller. My favorite new revelation is that Prince William physically attacked him after a dispute over Meghan’s alleged rudeness with the staff, causing Harry to “freak out”, breaking his “collar” and causing him to fall into a dog bowl.

What? Rather than a sharp disagreement between two expensively educated military veterans, Willy v Harold sounds like a catfight between two big girls squabbling outside St Trinian’s dormitories over lipstick.

This matchup was less of a rumble in the jungle and more of a small fuss in Nott Cott’s kitchen. “The dog’s bowl broke under my back, the pieces cut me,” laments Harry in his autobiography, Spare.

It ended, he notes, with “scratches and bruises.” All this from a former British Army captain who served two tours in Afghanistan, now boasts of killing 25 Taliban members and once Captain General of the Royal Marines, whose new motto should be By Sea, By Land , per dog. Bowl.

How glad they must be that Harry no longer bears his honorary title, for surely this elite fighting force would burn with shame at their lack of courage.

Not to mention his lack of discretion in publicly mentioning his Taliban death count; this is the kind of morbid vanity that every decent professional soldier abhors and only belongs in a video game.

Prince Harry’s adventures are particularly hard to miss right now because, with all the subtlety of a runaway tank, he’s moving into the crucial phase of Megxit.

Three years after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fled these shores to escape the tyranny of royal privilege and free homes, their campaign to wreak havoc on the House of Windsor is at its peak.

After the damaging revelations that aired first on Oprah, then in a variety of podcasts, interviews, and throughout Netflix’s six-part documentary series, we now have la pièce de résistance, the icing on the stale cake; Harry’s tell-all book along with at least three tell-all TV interviews to accompany it.

But what is left to tell us all? A lot, it seems. Never mind teenage cocaine use and losing your virginity in a field outside a country pub, isn’t that what all dukes do? – The printed page has produced the purest distillation yet of Harry’s deep dissatisfaction and unhappiness with himself, his family and, above all, his wretched secondary position in the royal hierarchy.

Without any special order, Spare reveals that he once contacted some kind of spiritualist to get in touch with his dead mother; he believes that his sister is his ‘arch-nemesis’; he begged his father not to marry the ‘evil stepmother’ Camilla; and he was once furious that Meghan was furious that Kate was furious after Meghan accused her of having hormonal baby brain when she was pregnant with Prince Louis.

Is there something else? Yes. One can only admire his rigor in settling scores. Seventeen years after the event, Harry uses Spare to accuse William and Kate of encouraging him to wear that infamous Nazi uniform to a costume party, most upsetting to him that they escaped blame in the subsequent scandal.

Then, as now, what haunts Harry is not what actually happens in his life, but the press coverage and public perception of what happened. This allows you to avoid responsibility and convince yourself that nothing is ever your fault, not even wearing a swastika bracelet in public for a laugh.

‘I only obey orders’, is what he didn’t say while he wasn’t tapping his heels. However, at the time he was 20 years old and a bearing arms officer cadet at Sandhurst. If he wasn’t responsible for making his own decisions in those days, when would he be?

The book isn’t out yet, but the torrent of leaks and details emerging is delicious. The bruises, the dog bowl, the swastikas, the fairy tale cruelties he felt were his daily lot: these are the little tent pegs that hold up Harry’s huge canopy of misery, this is the ballast on his big moody hot air balloon.

And in writing all this, I may have invented a whole new literary genre: the self-destructive memoir, the autobiography that destroys a reputation instead of improving it.

Prince Harry wants to be seen as a hero on the long road to freedom, but each new revelation from Spare suggests that he is far more Adrian Mole than Nelson Mandela. The public is already begging for less, while the hashtag #ShutUpHarry was trending on Twitter for most of yesterday. Spare Us would perhaps be a more appropriate title for his book.

It certainly seems to be the case that the more the Duke and Duchess reap their story while subjecting their crop to deeper scrutiny and analysis, the less and less admirable it will seem. The worthy causes they so vociferously espouse sometimes seem like mere camouflage for Sussexian true revenge deals, making millions and establishing a legacy for themselves at the expense of others, most notably the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Will Harry and Meghan’s joint tale withstand the new self-exposure? Credulity is already being stretched and eyebrows are being raised. For example, Prince Harry revealed that he called his therapist immediately after his physical fight with William in 2019.

It says everything about the kind of man he has become, but even more so about the Duchess of Sussex’s claims at the time that palace officials prevented her from seeking help for her suicidal state because she “didn’t look well.” However, her husband had a therapist on speed dial 24 hours a day. What was stopping him from doing the same?

So far, the strongest emerging narrative is Harry’s obsession with Palace officials “briefing the press” against him and his wife, which he believes is at the heart of all his problems.

However, it doesn’t make sense. You seem to believe that the British newspapers and magazines form one giant sponge whose sole purpose is to suck up a custard of lies about the Sussexes every day, and then spoon-feed those same lies to the gullible fools of the British public.

That is to deny the vibrant and independent nature of British newspapers and the bristly and varied opinions of Britons, who can make up their own minds, thank you very much. Harry thinks that everyone is stupid and gullible except him.

When William tells Harry that Meghan is difficult and harsh with the staff, he accuses his brother of accepting the ‘press narrative’. In his interview with Tom Bradby, which will air on Sunday, the ITV presenter suggests that Harry is being a hypocrite by railing against invasions of his own privacy but now “invading the privacy of his closest loved ones without permission”. .

Prince Harry responds: “That would be the accusation of people who don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family has been reporting to the press.”

However, he does not shy away from detailing intimate family conversations following Prince Philip’s funeral. “Please, boys, don’t make my later years a misery,” was Charles’s plea to the warring William and Harry, hours after burying his own father. Revealing this intensely private moment to the world was, I thought, a particularly cheap shot.

“I want a family, not an institution,” he also told Bradby, a classic moment of Harry’s ultimate hypocrisy. Because on the pages of his book, in the canyons of his mind, and in all his interviews to date, Prince Harry has done nothing but despise his family and abuse their trust, while clinging like mad to titles. and institutional figures, to inheritance. and lineage that are the only things that distinguish him from the pack.

Like a drowning sailor clinging to the mast of a sinking ship, he cannot let go. Without the institution, it would be nothing.

In the meantime, this great gathering of their grievances isn’t over and it must be exhausting for all who are being crushed in their crucible of woe. Yet who could have imagined at this point that Spare’s hero would be William and not Harry. And that if the older brother pushed the younger brother in exasperation, one can understand why. And even secretly admire him for doing it.