SARAH VINE: So where is Meghan? Usually she is grafted onto Harry’s side.

One thing really stood out to me about the media blitz of Prince Harry last week. Not so much the careless inaccuracies in his various accounts of events, from the death of the Queen Mother to memories of his first date with Meghan. Not even his petulance (bordering on naked aggression) toward the handpicked few journalists who enlisted to help sell his narrative whenever one of them dared to ask him anything even vaguely approaching a probing question.

No, the real question on my mind is this: where was Meghan?

I don’t mean in terms of the book, after all, his fingerprints are all over it. I mean physically, where is she?

We haven’t seen skin or hair from her for days. Which, actually, is very uncharacteristic.

Normally she never leaves Harry’s side. Normally she’s practically surgically grafted onto him, dangling from him like an extra appendage.

Wherever he goes, she goes, him scowling grimly at anyone who ventures within ten feet of them, her smile fixed firmly in place.

It is very rare that Meghan misses the opportunity to show the world her fabulousness. And after all, what better opportunity than this, the publication of the long-awaited memoir of her beloved husband, all eyes on him?

You would have thought she would have been front and center at events, in her couture gowns and sparkling jewelry, on hand to squeeze his as he sat through various interviews. That she would be eager to get her attention, to reassure him with an encouraging look, to place a guiding hand on her back, as she has done so many times in the past; In short, standing by her man’s side as she weathers the inevitable storm. of criticism

After all, he sat staunchly by her side as she told the world her ‘truth’, whether it was reenacting her first curtsy to the Queen or holding back tears as she recalled yet another royal-related trauma.

He fooled around in the chicken coop as she shared her secret grief with Oprah, juggled obligingly at the window as she delivered another of her meaningful homilies to a grateful world.

You would have thought the least she could do was put on some cashmere and show a little solidarity. But not. Not a breath of the fragrant, not even a hint of those exquisitely shapely ankles.

It may, of course, be that there is a perfectly logical explanation. Maybe one of the babies isn’t well and she’s too busy administering Calpol. She maybe she’s not feeling well, in which case she’s fair.

Who knows? One thing’s for sure though, it’s not like her to shy away from the limelight.

I really hope there’s a good explanation, as otherwise its absence is a bit worrisome. Because it would be horrible, wouldn’t it, if, having left his home, destroyed his entire family, burned his bridges with the army and let down the British public, Prince Harry discovered that he was no longer at the center of his world. ?

When you think of all he’s given for her, all the personal sacrifices he’s made to make her happy, it would be an unthinkable tragedy if that extraordinary bond between them were to loosen under the pressure of public exposure.

And the truth is that this memory has not had the desired effect. Yes, it sold a lot of copies, yes, it captured headlines all over the world, but in terms of the Duke and Duchess’s poll rating, it’s been an absolute disaster.

An overwhelming majority of the public now wants to see them stripped of their royal titles. They have been the object of outright ridicule on social media.

And according to a YouGov survey, the Prince’s popularity has plummeted, with some sections of the population even ranking him lower than Prince Andrew.

Furthermore, while 21 per cent of Brits believe Harry’s motivation for publishing the book is to “tell his side of the story”, almost twice that number (41 per cent) think it’s only for the money. .

This will be the real test for Harry and Meghan.

Relationships are easy when everything is going well. Romance thrives under favorable conditions. The hard part is what happens when the going gets tough.

As much as Prince Harry’s behavior irritates me, I don’t want to see him get hurt. He has proven her loyalty to her in public beyond any doubt. It would be fair if she did the same.

Oh, be cool like Coolidge

I love Jennifer Coolidge. She’s everything women her age (61) shouldn’t be, as we saw during her hilarious acceptance speech at the Golden Globes last week.

There’s so much pressure on us to age gracefully, stay slim, fill our wrinkles with drool, live like saints…but she doesn’t do any of that. And the fact that she can thrive in Hollywood against a backdrop of starving actresses and tight-lipped botoxed-up eyeballs gives me a strange kind of hope.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but if I did, it would be this: be more Coolidge.

The strike will only affect poor students

The University and College Union has joined other neo-Marxist organizations such as the British Medical Association (whose vice chair of the board is Dr Emma Runswick, a supporter of China’s disastrous ‘covid zero’ policy) in announcing industrial action.

University professors will now go on an 18-day strike next month, which, since there are only 28 days in February and taking weekends into account, means basically the entire month off. Meanwhile, students, who already suffered endless disruptions due to Covid and additional strikes last year, will still have to pay their tuition and accommodation fees, which, for the vast majority of them, means racking up debts that will take years to pay off. .

But, of course, none of that matters to the unions. The only thing that matters to them is inflicting the greatest possible damage on the Government, at the cost of the future of thousands of young people.

Keep the children out of this, Harry.

One of the aspects of the Prince Harry revelations that I find most disgusting is its reference to the children of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Not only is it an egregious violation of a child’s privacy to reveal that Charlotte burst into tears over those stupid overpriced bridesmaids dresses (I still can’t believe she got Givenchy to design them, most absurd waste of money), he is also inflicting on his niece and nephews precisely the kind of scrutiny and pressure that he says led to much of his own suffering.

Unforgivable.

Former Labor MP Simon Danczuk, 56, is shown frolicking in a swimming pool with his new love, 28-year-old beauty therapist Claudine Uwamahoro. She maintains that he is the “love of my life”, and he says that he wishes they had met sooner. One hopes not much sooner, otherwise he would be dating an embryo.

The Brit Awards, Britain’s pop Oscars, dropped separate categories for men and women in a bid to become “more inclusive.” Nominated for the all-important Artist of the Year category are Central Cee (weirdly a ‘teaching rapper’ my kids used to go to school with in Kensington – a lovely, polite guy as I recall), Fred Again (a DJ), George Ezra, Harry Styles and Stormzy. In other words, all men. It’s funny isn’t it, how ‘inclusivity’ always seems to come at the expense of women these days.

Gary Lineker says MPs should be paid more to attract ‘bright minds’. I dare say if you’re paid as much as he is, a basic salary of £84,144 must seem woefully inadequate. Too bad not all taxpayer-funded organizations are as generous as the BBC, huh?

I was amused to see, in a recent photograph of Prince Harry and a friend taken at their home in Montecito, that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have a monogrammed doormat. The epitome of sophistication, or too vulgar for words? It’s up to you.

Radio 2 in the afternoons used to be a mild mix of dad jokes, musical nostalgia and corny jokes. Then they replaced Steve Wright with Scott Mills, and now it’s a nightmare of frenetic dance music and trying too hard to be cool. In other words, indistinguishable from every other annoying radio station on the air.

Poor Lisa Marie Presley, dead at 54. It was proof that money can’t buy happiness. But in 2020 she suffered a devastating blow, when her son shot herself. I know she had addiction issues, but if you ask me, her cause of death is simple: a broken heart.