Harry and Meghan’s Marxist takeover — there’s more to come

Even as it is, I can’t tell you how much information I have withheld from you over the years about Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright’s new house (“Don’t you think our box sash windows look Christmassy?!?”), or Megan Fox’s new metallic green nail varnish (“It has a strong sexual energy.” Does it? How is green sexual? Green is for many things — topiary, sprouts, Kermit — but hopefully not our genitals. Still, peace and love, good vibes etc etc).

Gemma Collins

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And so we begin the first Celebrity Watch of the year with a story that is guaranteed to be genuinely worthy of your consideration: The Only Way Is Essex star Gemma Collins, aka “The GC”, visited Bethlehem over the Christmas period and was “blown away” by the holy city. Why?

“The feeling of this was like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” she posted on Instagram, complete with a picture of herself “where baby Jesus was born”. However, an earlier Instagram post clarified Collins’s true motivation for putting Bethlehem on her “to do” list: “Madonna’s been there!”

And there we have it. The true reasoning behind a celebrity visit to a major religious site. Next week, Joey Essex goes to Mecca and posts, “Guys — had to check out the place where bingo was invented!”, while summer will surely see Gemma Collins abroad again, this time in Lourdes, tweeting: “The place where Madonna got the name of her daughter!” I’m totally ready for a 2023 where cast members of Towie explain their understanding of the significance of major religious sites. It feels . . . oddly comforting.

Andrew Tate

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Andrew Tate

As the news has been swift to inform us, unpleasant TikTok misogynist Andrew Tate has recently met his downfall. While engaging in a “twatty” and latterly sexually threatening Twitter exchange with Greta Thunberg — over Christmas! Give it a break, dude! — Tate inadvertently gave away his location via a pizza box, left in the foreground of a photograph. Romanian police — who have long wanted to question Tate over multiple allegations of sex trafficking — worked out his location from the pizza box, and Tate is now in custody.

At least, that was the story that first circulated, only for Romanian police to strongly deny that it was the photograph of the pizza box that gave away Tate’s location.

“It’s funny — but no,” an official spokesman said.

But of course they would! No police force would want to give away such a sweet, reliable, modern method of tracking alleged sexual criminals! Every police force in the world wants sex cases to carry on posting any and all pictures of their Deliveroo orders, in order that justice can be served — roughly ten minutes after the stuffed-crust Mega Meat Pizza and six-pack of Monster Energy drinks. Fast food is bad for you. If you’re a dum-dum wanted by the police.

● Read Hugo Rifkind’s interview with Andrew Tate

Olivia Colman

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Olivia Colman

In a world where there has never been more on-screen sex — Normal People; Euphoria; Bridgerton; Lady Chatterley’s Lover; My Policeman; Blonde; Good Luck to You, Leo Grande — it seems like screenwriters are agreed that the best way to really know a character is to view them through a moment of sexual intimacy with another character. Which ignores the fact that people are just as emotionally exposed when eg faced with a malfunctioning kettle, or on a long train journey with two under-fives and no buffet.

Accordingly, it has taken National Treasure Olivia Colman to raise the subject of whether sex scenes really are necessary. In an interview last week, she revealed that she originally wanted the sex scenes in her forthcoming movie Empire of Light to be removed.

“I said, ‘Why can’t they go for the kiss, and cut — and then pretend that it had already happened?’ ”

And indeed, I think Colman has a very sensible point. Everything that current sex scenes “achieve”, by way of character revelation, can equally be served by a kiss, a cut — and then one romantic partner cheerfully saying, “That there was some smashing sex, and I know loads more about you now. Thank you!”

Bob Dylan

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Bob Dylan

Similarly newsworthy has been the insight into the still mysterious day-to-day life of living rock prophet Bob Dylan, who has opened up about his favourite TV shows.

“I recently binged Coronation Street . . . I’m no fan of packaged programmes or news shows,” the maverick revealed. “I never watch anything foul-smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting, nothing dog ass.”

Well, there’s a lot to unpack here. First of all — “dog ass”? If he means this metaphorically, I get him. No one wants to watch metaphorical dog’s ass. But if he actually means “no physical, actual dog’s arses”, that closes down both The Dog House and Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly with dog expert Graeme Hall, which are two of the best shows on TV. Plus, Crufts. Perhaps the solution is for the shows’ makers to agree to put rear-end clothing on the dogs — to reassure the Wiggle Wiggle songwriter. Before each show a caption could state, “This show is Bob Dylan-compliant,” followed by eg some boxers in boxers and schnauzers in trousers being wheeled out.

Meanwhile, the Coronation Street revelation has really thrown the cat among the pigeons — with Coronation Street bosses immediately and understandably offering Bob a cameo on the show.

“To hear that Bob Dylan is a Coronation Street viewer blows my mind,” the producer Iain MacLeod said. “I would absolutely love the idea of him turning up in the Rovers Return one night. Maybe we could write in an open-mike night — and a mysterious singer could roll in out of the Manchester rain and do a turn.”

Having recently seen Dylan in concert, I can’t think of anything more discombobulating than what appears to be a tetchy Old Testament God turning up at the Rovers Return and chopping out an intentionally mangled version of Like a Rolling Stone, which Roy Cropper greets with the knowing, Dylan-goes-electric in-joke of “JUDAS!” — only for Dylan to mishear it as “dog ass” and storm out. Everyone subsequently turns on Cropper and there’s a total hoo-ha. That’s Corrie bathos in a nutshell.

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The NHS

With the NHS currently in the biggest crisis of its existence — in many hospitals, the sentence “putting a sticking plaster on an open wound” is now no longer a metaphor, but a dizzily unobtainable state of service — the public have been advised to help out how they can.

“Now is not the time to be going out and starting to do a huge long run,” Sir Frank Atherton, chief medical officer for Wales, told the BBC. “We want people to get fit and active in the new year, of course we do, but do it sensibly.” Atherton’s fear was that thousands of Christmas pudding-stuffed middle-aged men would take up jogging at 10am on January 1 — and find themselves in A&E at 10.30am with a suspected minor heart attack and/or Jogger’s Nipple.

While Atherton is, of course, correct in warning people off behaviours that might end in a trip to A&E, looking at the stats for A&E admissions in England in 2020-21, it seems there are far more risky behaviours than jogging. For instance, the fourth biggest problem on the chart is “urinary tract infection”, with 1,121,421 admissions — meaning Sir Frank would be far better off telling people to avoid thongs and opt for roomy pants with a cotton gusset instead. And 156,479 admissions were for “constipation” — suggesting every A&E department in England could simply do with an All-Bran concession in the car park.

Harry and Meghan

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Harry and Meghan

Although, in many ways, 2023 is still an unwritten story — a blank page! A fresh start! An intriguing and in some ways alarming mystery! — there is one thing we can be sure we already know about this year: there’s going to be a lot of Harry and Meghan in it. The Industrial Royal Stories Complex — for so long a comforting staple of all media, from the tabloids to the BBC — has gone through a seismic change. First there was the Netflix documentary, already racking up more than 81.55 million hours of viewing, and now there is the bombshell leaking of Harry’s memoir, in which the duke confesses to killing 25 Taliban insurgents, getting into a physical fight with Prince William, and losing his virginity in a field “like a young stallion”. Although not all on the same day.

With this kind of incendiary material being chopped out at this rate, it’s clear what’s happened: Harry and Meghan have basically gone Marx and seized the means of production. You want stories about the royal family? Well, you need no longer make do with boring photocalls outside a new factory and/or Nicholas Witchell standing outside Buckingham Palace, looking like a sad candle: Meghan and Harry will fruitily undercut the previous supply chain with revelations about cocaine, racism, broken dog bowls and being “spanked on the ass”. And, not surprisingly, it’s proving to be a far more popular product.

For if the whole concept of “a royal family” is something that, speaking briskly, is the lives of a small bunch of people offered to the public — on the understanding that, in numerous other countries, that offer was eventually rejected and they became republics — then you can’t argue with Meghan and Harry’s product. In terms of sales figures, they’re smashing it. While there is still a big market for an Old Skool Royal Family who just keep their heads down, have no opinions, wear nice coats and keep on smiling, Harry and Meghan have tapped a huge new international market in “sexy young misunderstood rebels nihilistically critiquing the whole, weird business”. And it is weird.

Harry and Meghan have lasered in on the castle-cold 19th-century madness of the royals: who royal men are supposed to marry (“someone who fits the mould”), what being born a royal child means (“the majority of my memories are being swarmed by paparazzi”) and how child princes are supposed to deal with the death of their mother (“get out there, show no emotion, meet the people and shake hands”). And that stuff was selling like hot cakes before Harry’s memoir then dished up death, family feuds and shagging.

And the demographics eating up Meghan and Harry’s content tell you everything you need to know: to those under the age of 35, and/or in other countries, the lives of the British royal family seem bananas. Harry and Meghan have simply broken the fourth wall and are now narrating that bananas story of being a royal direct to the audience. Like Fleabag, but without the dead hamster.

And so all the controversy, disapproval and hoo-ha is, essentially, the fight between an old format and a new one. This is VHS versus Betamax. Modern celebrities cry, post candid selfies, talk about therapy, discuss trauma, open up about their childhood, do a bit of #activism, tell the candidly awful stories of how they lost their virginity, and discuss how dysfunctional their childhood was. Essentially, Harry and Meghan are simply the first royals to operate in a truly modern way — which is why it seems so disruptive. After all, back at Buckingham Palace, their idea of a “modern” royal family is King Charles appearing on The Repair Shop in a suit, talking about a clock. That’s not gonna fly with Gen Z! Or Gen A! That’s nothing compared with Prince Harry knocking out a memoir that reads like a cross between Bravo Two Zero and a Jilly Cooper novel.

Have they gone too far? Well, it’s Gen Z and Gen A who will be the final arbiters of whether Meghan and Harry really are “traitors”, “despicable” or “oversharing their private lives” — or simply the first royals being honest about how obviously batshit it is to be royal. It’s a long game. And if I were to predict how, in 20 years’ time, Kate and William’s children will be dealing with being royal, I think I’d risk 50 quid on their methods looking far less like their grandfather’s and far more like their old Uncle Harry’s. Not least because they’ll have some very vivid memories to share, with some kind of AI Oprah-Bot, of what the family reaction was to reading about how Uncle Harry had a seance with his mother’s ghost.