The Daily Express ‘journalist’ Carole Malone tweets about Harry Windsor’s phone-hacking court case: “In court today Prince Harry – the bloke who in his A levels got a B in Art and a D in Geography – was asked if his 55 pg witness statement was drafted for him by his lawyers. “The whole thing was written by me” he said . He’s clearly improved since school then!” Well, Malone’s career includes writing for the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and now the Express and has appeared on TV shows like Loose Women, Jeremy Vine’s piss poor show on Channel 5, the Alan Titchmarsh Show and Celebrity Big Brother. She’s clearly not improved since school, then. Malone is a hate-monger by profession – you only need to read literally anything she writes to know that – but here we have an exercise in pure snobbery, albeit directed at an impossibly rich and privileged member of the royal family.
It’s true that Harry Windsor was not the most gifted scholar of them all. Few of the royals are noted for their wide-ranging intellect, regardless of having the best education money can by. Maybe Harry was thick or maybe like some others I could mention – do I mean me? I surely do – there was other stuff at work. I had undiagnosed ADHD, as well as other mental health issues from childhood onwards, Harrys mother was killed in a terrible car crash and given the trauma that event caused and everything he has learned about it since, is it perhaps any surprise to learn he’s more than a bit damaged? Growing up within such a weird, dysfunctional family can’t have helped much (him, not me, I think). That could explain his less than stellar qualifications? Mind you, apart from learning small talk, waving and shaking hands, what else is there for a royal to learn?
But back to Malone, whose educational qualifications are not easily available online, and the somewhat obvious implication by her that Harry Windsor could not possibly have written his witness statement all on his own. That’s how snakes like her operate, sowing the seeds of doubt in our minds. It’s entirely coincidental that she used to work at the Mirror which is the organ up before the beak this week.
Why should Harry not have written it? I’ve got far less by way of qualifications than the boy himself but I reckon i wouldn’t struggle to compile such a statement. It might need a little tweaking but the suggestion that because you are not weighed down with A levels and degrees you’re thick is not just a kick at a twice-removed royal: it’s a kick down at all of us who, for one reason or another, didn’t do the business at school.
Maybe Malone is right and really has improved since he was at school? I know I have, although I am the first to admit that I don’t know a verb from an adjective from a noun. But even if he hasn’t, maybe he could write adequately in the first place? Maybe he wasn’t bothered about doing English at school? The thing is, if he says he wrote his own statement, why shouldn’t we believe him? I’d certain trust someone like Harry Windsor far more than some angry hack grifting a living in the gutter press.
