LIZ JONES: Meghan's glamorous mask had slipped... and this is the ugly truth it's exposed
Earlier this week, the Duchess of Sussex revealed the real reason why she ditched her verbose brand name American Riviera Orchard: it was a ‘word salad’.
The phrase refers not to the arugula she may grow in her Montecito ‘garden’, but rather a mess of words and phrases that are difficult to understand.
By that measure, her ‘speech’ last night – which wasn’t a speech at all but a sycophantic onstage Q&A – was a salad bowl of unintelligible cliches, platitudes and fake candour.
The occasion was the Time100 summit in New York to celebrate the ‘most influential people in the world’ as ranked by the US magazine Time.
Not that Meghan and Harry made the list this year. They were last top of the pops in 2021 when they appeared on Time’s cover, Meghan front and centre, Harry perched like a parrot on her shoulder.
But that didn’t stop Meghan from making her grand appearance last night. And boy! As she spoke to the magazine’s chief executive Jessica Sibley – not quite an interviewer of Sir David Frost’s calibre or even of the BBC’s One Show host Alex Jones – there was lettuce, tomato, cucumber, a boiled egg, and even some asparagus from the ‘garden’ thrown in.
Wearing a £3,755 Ralph Lauren trouser suit that was so voluminous it could have powered her into space to join singer-turned-‘astronaut’ Katy Perry et al, Meghan had painted on her most earnest, humble expression.
She rattled her £35,000-worth of jewellery through much hand-gesturing which I imagine was meant to imply she was sincere, heartfelt, passionate.
Meghan at the Time100 summit in New York to celebrate the ‘most influential people in the world’ as ranked by the US magazine Time
At the summit Meghan was wittering on about how the past year had been ‘busy and ambitious’ – read ‘chaotic and overambitious’, writes LIZ JONES
As for her ego-stroking interrogator, she was probably more concerned Megs would take her eye out.
Meghan made several stabs at eating her own organic, flower-sprinkled humble pie. She admitted she had given herself ‘the space and the grace’ to make mistakes when launching three businesses this year – her hastily renamed lifestyle brand As Ever, her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, and her podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder.
Look at that, a whole vegetarian lasagne!
The podcast, launched through the couple’s beleaguered production firm Archewell earlier this month, has so far had the calibre of ‘never heard of’ guests that make me yearn for her long-suffering ‘friend’, the actress, comedian and acclaimed screenwriter Mindy Kaling.
Poor Mindy appeared on Meghan’s Netflix show, only to be scolded for referring to the duchess as a ‘Markle’ and not a ‘Sussex’, an English county she had probably never heard of. Mind you, Mindy couldn’t even pronounce ‘Le Creuset’.
But, back to the summit in New York, where Meghan was wittering on about how the past year had been ‘busy and ambitious’ – read ‘chaotic and overambitious’.
She insisted that With Love, Meghan, had not been a ‘stand and stir’ (that’s a cookery show where the host does nothing else but, well, stand and stir as the duchess generally did through all eight episodes).
And she said she knows all about the latest ‘SKUs’ (that’s ‘Stock Keeping Units’ which businesses use to manage product levels to you and me).
Footage from the event appeared to show Meghan ‘snubbing’ Harry
The duchess wore a £3,755 Ralph Lauren trouser suit that was so voluminous it could have powered her into space to join singer-turned-‘astronaut’ Katy Perry et al
Does she? Last I read, she was forced to apologise and issue several customer refunds when her brand accidentally ‘oversold’ her limited-edition honey despite there not being enough in stock.
Perhaps ‘SKUs’ had been etched in calligraphy on her wrist to remind her not to say SUVs, the gas guzzler she’s more familiar with.
But don’t fret, she reassured us with a blinding smile. All of this is as important to her as her son Archie losing a tooth, which she said she hoped to be home in time to see. Read: home in time to make sure he doesn’t get any blood on the silken lavender pillow.
Meghan added that being a ‘mom’ to Archie, five, and Lilibet, three, often puts things in perspective for her. ‘Something that is seemingly so big somehow becomes so microscopic in importance compared to what’s happening with my children,’ she explained.
Wow. Millions of working women the world over must have slapped their chapped hands to wrinkled foreheads. In one fell swoop, Meghan had put the women’s movement all the way back to the 1950s. There was the glass ceiling, which the duchess was covering with nailed-on hardboard as she admitted she puts the minutiae of raising a family before work.
I know many women who have spent decades trying to hide that fact while painting on a serene, non-exhausted, I’m-OK-really face. Women struggling to support their families against workplace sexism, difficult managers and toxic environments because they – unlike Meghan – don’t have the financial means to work for themselves. Last night there was the duchess, glibly undoing it all.
While she was at it, she couldn’t resist a sly dig at the British Establishment and Harry’s ongoing battle against the Government to have taxpayer-funded security protection when he’s in the UK.
‘To have a partner and husband who is so supportive and have healthy kids who are so joyful in the freeness [sic] of their life and the safety of their life we created for them,’ she gushed even as footage from the event appeared to show her ‘snubbing’ Harry as he stretched out a hand.
‘Of all the things that happened, I never would have imagined at this point I’d be so happy and free and I really do.’
Sic, sic, sic!
The glamorous mask had slipped, revealing a woman who is merely cosplaying at being an entrepreneur, wafting rather than working.
She even brushed off compelling questions about online trolling and bullying by saying – as though vile internet hatred is little more than one of her beloved buzzing bees – that she has made a ‘very conscious effort’ to create boundaries for herself. This meant she was able to, and I quote, ‘tune out the negative noise’.
If only we all had that skill.
