It was exactly 3.51 this afternoon when I realised that I must spend the rest of my life in a dark and remote cave, where Meghan Markle’s 40th birthday video can never reach me again. It’s barely more than two minutes long, but I beseech you, do not go there. Let me take this one for the team. Let’s start with how it ends because then at least we can be sure that it does.
Prince Harry is standing in the background, like a spare part, juggling balls. It may be a metaphor for something. I couldn’t say. The main event, naturally, is the birthday girl herself, front, centre and softly lit in her “home office”. It must have taken teams of people weeks of effort to create a set like this. Our heroine sits at an enormous pale wood desk big enough for a board meeting, although I do wish there’d been one of those little name plates that you get at conferences with her preferred method of styling herself: “Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex”.
I digress. There is a vase of white flowers, a brace of big white in-trays, a white Hermès blanket folded perfectly to show off the big H — because otherwise what’s the point? It could be from Primark — and a large pile of her recent children’s books, so it’s good to know that someone enjoyed it.
Continuing the natural colour palette, there’s a huge white crystal — would rose quartz have spoilt the vibe? — and a white notepad with a black pen laid across it just so. There is, naturally, a teacup and saucer and a couple of flimsy-looking chocolate biscuits. Hobnobs might have been more apt. Our leading lady is wearing not one but two white sapphire “constellation” necklaces costing £1,300 a pop. One is Gemini for Lili and the other Taurus for Archie.
She’s wearing the sort of no-make-up make-up that takes a seasoned professional several hours and 47 different products to perfect, and layers of white clothes styled to the Nth degree. The chair is taupe, the wildly expensive nude suede stilettos are taupe, the fireplace and floor are shades of taupe. So, too, is the dog, which also adds texture. Would the dog have been allowed if it were the wrong colour? A red setter, say? The fate of Harry, shut outside, suggests not.
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Meghan has a toe-curling exchange with the comedian Melissa McCarthy about the latest act of empathy and compassion with which she is fast becoming synonymous. In honour of her birthday, she has asked 40 of her friends to mentor other women, and it is to be hoped that at least one of them said, “Oh bugger off.”
I jest. Her idea is definitely more fun than presents and cake and not po-faced and joyless at all. Honestly, by the time we got to that point, I’d endured so many “jokes” about wearing hats and drinking tea and sledgehammer references to the royal life she led for all of about ten minutes that I had to go and lie down. Somebody show me to my cave.
