Opinion
Another day, another ill-advised interview by a member of the House of Windsor. Prince Harry has a way to go to outdo the output of his parents as their marriage collapsed like a derelict heritage building undergoing poorly controlled demolition.
Prince Charles had his infamous 1994 chat — two and a half hours of primetime — inspiring a barrage of gleeful tabloid headlines: "Charles: I Cheated on Diana"; "Di told you so". His affair with Camilla shook the monarchy amid revelations so excruciating — the leaked phone conversation known as "tampongate" — that even The Crown drew the line at a re-enactment.
Princess Diana returned fire in 1995 in a still-controversial interview — a quarter of a century later the BBC has had to apologise for how it was obtained — with her briskly incendiary, "There were three of us in this marriage."
Diana said, of herself, "She won't go quietly… I'll fight to the end." It's hard to shake the spooky feeling that Harry has taken it upon himself to keep up her work on an institution still thrown into chaos when one of The Firm breaks step. A visit to his nana is the latest cherry bomb lobbed into a palace toilet bowl. Of course, he did an interview, with NBC morning show Today. "She's on great form," he said of the Queen. "She's always got a great sense of humour with me." She would need to, given all the drama. He added, enigmatically, "I'm just making sure that she's protected and got the right people around her." Hmm. What could he mean? It's hard to imagine anyone around her who has done the royals more irreparable damage than Prince Andrew even if, for some reason, relatively harmless Harry cops more outrage. Harry talked about "trying to help", to "use the platform, the influence, to try and steer people…" He didn't say which people he was trying to steer, or where.