Harry, the lost prince adrift on a sea of Californian psycho-babble
“What was your feeling about Joe Rogan’s comments?” “About vaccination? Ridiculous, obviously.” “Don’t say that. Stay out of it… With a platform comes responsibility.” Just two frat bros shooting the shit, right? Ironically, it’s an exchange straight out of the atmosphere of Joe Rogan’s own show The Joe Rogan Experience, where the host argues the toss on any number of pop culture ephemera, aliens, The Sopranos, Bernie bros, the lot. In this case Rogan had suggested healthy young people were within their rights to think twice before taking a Covid vaccine: “If you’re a healthy person… like, I don’t think you need to worry about this.”
The point of difference here is that the interlocutor talking feelings, platforms and staying out of it is none other than His Royal Highness Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex: Harry Wales to his army pals; Harry Mountbatten-Windsor, if he had to pick a surname. The other “man on the line”, as it were, is Dax Shepard, former B-list Hollywood actor and podcast host of “Armchair Expert”, which celebrates “the messiness of being human”. Previous interviewees include goofball comedy actor Seth Rogan, ex-Presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the rapper Macklemore.
Harry’s appeal as a modern celebrity is straightforward – he’s an insider-outsider. In his interview with Oprah Winfrey, he says: “I was trapped but I didn’t know I was trapped… My father and my brother, they are trapped, they don’t get to leave.” He tells Shepard: “The bubble was burst.” If he was inclined, he might have invoked the old hymn: “I was blind, but now I see.”
What distinguishes Harry’s transformation to West Coast confessional podcast guru from the pathetic commercial antics of other “minor royals” (last year, Peter Phillips, Harry’s first cousin and another of the Queen’s grandsons, was found to be hawking his royal status in a milk advert shown in China) is that Harry isn’t simply trading on the glamour of the Royal currency, influence, access, pomp and circumstance. He is showing it up for what it really is. He is the beneficiary of a deep phenomenon in our culture – the tendency to reward poshos who make a personal virtue of seeing through the other poshos.
Why is Boris so different from David Cameron? They share a common school, university and party, and yet the current PM’s remarkable personal appeal derives from the way that only he can make you feel as if you’re in on the joke. Boris’ great skill as a communicator and as a politician is the way he’s able to subtly shift the terms of engagement – wouldn’t we all love to go to an interview with a serious Westminster journalist with our shirt untucked and our hair akimbo? Wouldn’t we love to have that thrill, just once in our lives, of showing the pompous old farts up for what they really are?
In his conversation with Shepard, Harry returns to his insider-outsider status: “I feel way more connection to people that I met in parts of Africa… and I’m fortunate like that.” He claims he has “always felt different” from the rest of the Royal Household. Park the Gap Yah pseudo-philosophy: let’s take Harry seriously here. How does he feel so able to de-couple himself from his class status and background? He tells Shepard: “I want to share my story to help someone… I do it to help other people…. It’s about sharing your story knowing how relatable it is.” Harry genuinely believes that by sharing his pain, his trauma, his suffering, he can free himself from his past: if I can do it, then so can you.
And yet I don’t think that’s how Harry Mountbatten-Windsor’s story will end. His path may lead not from loneliness to acceptance, but from loneliness to further loneliness. And no amount of philosophising about mental health, or frank conversations with West Coast talk show hosts can bring him the normal life he appears to crave.
His appeal will always derive from his insider-outsider status: the ex-Royal who showed them all up. To his fans, he will always be a marvellous curio, and like all curiosities and artefacts, he will enjoy the care and love of new ownership. The artefact is polished up and brought out on the big occasions and often taken out of its case. But then it’s ignored, turns dusty, the sheen becomes tarnished. It passes on to a new owner, and soon it’s a mere plaything to adorn a childhood bedroom.