Journalists from these sceptical societies soon discovered a wealth of treasure about Meghan that lay scattered, like so many disused relics, on the plains of her past. In this hunt, they were joined by many of their British and European colleagues from countries such as Germany, whose media have a vigorous tabloid element. These are not tame publications. They never were. Although in tone and content some of them are akin to The National Enquirer in the United States, many others are more serious and solid publications. The very word tabloid connotes something of the sleazy supermarket variety to Americans, but in the rest of the world, it lacks those pejorative overtones and is simply a description of the more has popular end of the press. Nevertheless, all these publications share one aim with the sleazier element of the American market. They aim to unmask, and will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of a story as long as it is topical enough.
Meghan was in her mid-thirties. She had lived a full life. She had had a series of men. She had tried her hand at many different activities. There was never any doubt that there would be layers to unfold, newsworthy stories to dig up. The only question was, how dirty would the dirt be?
Speaking as someone who has had to sue every major newspaper company in Britain for libel in the course of the last forty five years, I can confirm that even relatively reputable publications seldom resist the temptation to put a sensational spin on perfunctory incidents in a celebrity’s past, so that the most anodyne features are represented as appalling flaws. Alan Frame, onetime Deputy Editor of the Daily Express, sister paper of the Sunday Express which broke the Meghan story, once told me that his paper had received so many contradictory accounts of my past, from so many people claiming to be my best friends, that he would have thought me the most popular woman on earth had they not been so vitriolic. Many of the informants, naturally, wanted financial recompense for their tales, tall though they were.
The corrupting influence of filthy lucre also travels in the opposite direction. British newspapers especially are renowned for paying handsome sums to informants who might, but equally might not, have a firm handle on the facts. Many publications are cynical enough not to let the truth get in the way of a good story when they wish to present east as west and north as south. It takes no imagination to see the meal journalists of this persuasion will make of sensational and verifiable facts.
It took very little digging to discover that the beauteous, A-lister of the 30th and 31st October had a back story, and one, moreover, that there was no need to embellish. Before the week was out, half of Fleet Street knew through their investigations in Hollywood and Toronto that Meghan had a history of cultivating, captivating, denigrating, and discarding both men and woman in her ascent to the top. A Mail journalist told me, ‘As she climbs up the next rung of the ladder, she plants the soles of her shoes on your head. And, when you wipe your face off, you see that it’s covered in cow dung.’
Meghan, in other words, had discarded a whole load of friends of both sexes, aside from men with whom she had been involved, and done it in such a way, that they had become enemies. These people were happy to talk to the press and, when they were not, to direct journalists to someone else who would. Throughout the first week of November 2016, reporters from all over the world were offering huge sums of money for some of these discards to talk. And some did. Even when they did not, a capable journalist would have enough of a whiff to know that there was a body buried somewhere nearby.
So rich were the pickings that the Mail journalist told me, ‘It’s not often that we find ourselves having to downplay instead of exaggerate. But with Meghan, that’s what we had to do. From the outset. It was the only way to get stories past the legal department.’
There was another and rather more touching dimension to the way the British press approached this scenario. A journalist from the Mirror encapsulated the whole thing perfectly by saying, ‘No one wanted to hurt Harry. He was truly popular, and if that was the girl he wanted, and if she could make him happy, which she certainly seemed to be doing, no one wanted to rain on his parade. Almost by common but silent consent, we all took a soft line.’
The line, however, wasn’t soft enough for Meghan, who wasn’t used to an enquiring press but to a tame one which slavishly reported whatever she or her representatives fed them. By the end of the first week of real fame, she was so perturbed over the possibilities of what might be said that Harry issued a statement:
‘Since he was young, Prince Harry has been very aware of the warmth that has been extended to him by members of the public. He feels lucky to have so many people supporting him and knows what a fortunate and privileged life he leads.
‘He is also aware that there is significant curiosity about his private
