Can I make a confession, just between the two of us, that is? I quite like Prince Harry. Please don’t tell anyone else. Yes, I know he’s just another royal but he seems to be a nice chap who has his heart in the right place. His work with the Invictus games was awesome. There, I said it. And, for a short while I actually felt sorry for him when he lambasted the media on the Andrew Marr Sunday morning BBC show. “Sadly that line between public and private life is almost non-existent. Everyone has a right to their privacy, and a lot of the members of the public get it, but sadly in some areas there is this sort of incessant need to find out every little bit of detail about what goes on behind the scenes. It’s unnecessary.”
I know his job, if you can call it a job (that’s a debate for another day), is not exactly what we might describe as ‘normal’. The whole point of being a royal is to be out there shaking hands with, and waving, at people in public places. It’s a kind of choreography. If the Queen goes to church, people turn out to watch her go to church and she waves at them. Apparently, we love this sort of thing, but shouldn’t there be an element of privacy for the royals? I’d say yes, everyone, including a royal, is entitled to privacy, but sometimes it is a two-way street.
Harry’s privacy pleading fell on my increasingly deaf ears when he got into bed with the enemy. I don’t mean literally, of course, because part of Harry’s problem, he feels, is that because of the constant media intrusion he can’t meet Miss Right, or Miss Anyone Else for that matter. Every time he meets someone and the media get wind of it, they descend en masse, ruining everything for everyone. Not nice. So what did Harry do next? He gave an exclusive interview to Hello! magazine. D’oh.
Hello! is not regarded as one of the more ferocious celeb scandal sheets, but it is still a celeb-based gossip and trivia magazine. It is not whiter than white either, having been sued by various famous people over the years. The type of people who read stuff like Hello! probably need to get out more if you ask me and the people who agree to participate in it undo any arguments they might have to decry the media obsessives who prey on their private lives. Harry, I’m afraid, has not exactly helped his privacy cause.
I did not read the entire article in Hello! because, thankfully, it is not on-line but the stuff you can read is basically royal tattle, references to his mother (“every single day we still think of her”), who was hounded by a rabid media, and anecdotes about the Queen (“she’s very busy”).
The real problem with all this media stuff is that people want to read about it. People really do enjoy reading celebrity scandal and the private lives of the royals. We know this because millions of people buy these magazines and newspapers like the Sun and the Mail. If the market for celebrity nonsense dried up tomorrow Harry and others might have more private lives, but if you live your life in public and then choose to appear in gossip magazines, even if it is to publicise the Invictus games (which barely needed publicity), I’m afraid you rather get what you deserve, or rather you get what always comes your way.
