Harry is back in London, but there will be no family reunion (Image: Getty)
Deary me, what a fiasco. It happens to the best of us, Harry, love. You book a hotel room, it’s all sorted, and you’ve just got to do your packing and get to the airport. Then, at the last minute, you discover the hotel has no record of it. Nightmare. You rummage through your inbox for the confirmation email. Nothing.
Still, I’m sure the Premier Inn Victoria will come to the rescue. Very reasonable rates, excellent transport links and a cooked breakfast. One can do worse.
No one does a family kerfuffle quite like the Windsors. They are as bad as each other. Everything Harry knows about communications, he’s learned from the ‘men in grey suits’. How can popping home for a few days become an international drama?
It’s like listening to a gossipy monologue performed by Patricia Routledge (Image: Getty)
I’ve tried to keep up with who said what and when, but it’s just all so embarrassing. No one emerges from this latest royal skirmish with their dignity intact. The Palace comes across as petty and callous, while Harry comes across as entitled (no surprise there) and, frankly, inept for failing to make it clear whether he actually wanted somewhere to stay.
Unless, of course, this was really a spin-off battle between rival communications teams, each trying to outmanoeuvre the other in the court of public opinion. In that case, neither side comes out of it looking particularly well either.
It’s like an Alan Bennett Talking Heads monologue performed by Patricia Routledge as a gossipy, curtain-twitching housewife: “Now then, Charles. You know the one, big house. Talks to the trees. Been wearing the same suit for 20 years. And his wife, she was the mistress once, you know. Now that’s commitment for you. Anyway, those two boys, William and Harry, he’s ginger but we don’t talk about that. They fell out and had a fight over a dog bowl. Imagine, two grown men, princes no less, swinging at each other like dockers at closing time, and Pedigree Chum flinging all over the flagstones.
“Anyway, Harry was meant to be coming over from America with the wife and children who haven’t seen their grandfather in so long they’d be shocked to discover he isn’t just a profile and his left ear is just as big. But then the wife – she sells jam for a living but acts like she’s up for the Nobel Peace Prize – anyway Miss Madam says they’re not coming, and that’s that.
“So Harry starts dithering. Didn’t tell his father he’ll still be needing the spare room. And then the day before suddenly he pipes up, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And they say, ‘Will you indeed? This is a palace not a bordello, you need to RSVP a week ahead.’
“You really can’t spring these things on people, even if they have staff. They need notice. Time to change the sheets, wash the towels, do a big shop. And since he’s been in California he won’t be wanting Tetley’s. No, it’ll be matcha tea. Bright green, like a cup of duckweed.
“But Harry says they did the dirty on him. What a row. You’d think with 240 bedrooms they could dust off a camp bed for the lad. You can be sure he’s making notes. What’s it they say? Revenge is a dish best served cold, but in this case it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet. So much unpleasantness, and no end in sight. Not quite an annus horribilis, more an horribilis painus in the annus, if you pardon my Latin.”