When you’ve been in this game a while you learn that everything has a shelf life, a sell-by date after which a once-fresh and appealing product starts to go stale and in some cases starts rotting and stinking. Which brings me to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. They aren’t the first celebs the public have become bored of, of course. Remember our national obsessions with Jade Goody, Paris Hilton, Kerry Katona, Katie Price, Jodie Marsh, Russell Brand, Callum Best, et al?
“But I never cared tuppence for any of those morons!” I hear you cry, and that is as maybe, but the truth is the media – any and all media – only reflects the passions and interests of their readers/listeners/viewers. If they don’t, they quickly go out of business. (It’s why there is no Independent newspaper anymore – it got preachy and high-handed and “told” its readers what was good for them, and no-one wants that.)
Anyway, that’s a debate for later over a pint. The fact is that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s £78m five-year Netflix deal will reportedly not be renewed when it expires next month. We are bored, and their star is falling. Fast.
In fact it’s imploding into a celebrity black hole from which there is no escape. Meghan and Harry’s problem was always that they were a one-trick pony. They only had one tale to tell. One thing we were interested in. The rest was vanity and hubris.
So yes we gawped as we might watching a chimp riding a bicycle as our two favorite royal mutton-heads blundered and gaffed their way though their now infamous Oprah interview – brilliantly corralled, curated and led by the nose by the eponymous media colossus.
They revealed intimate, ill-advised secrets, from behind the net curtains of Buckingham Palace. Secrets and details of the Royal Family – our Royal Family – the one that is part of the fabric of British national life and, whether you like it or not, part of the fabric of our own lives.
We cared not a jot for an ambitious American B-list actress and her seeming attempts to co-opt thousands of years of British history into her business plan. We welcomed her to Britain and our Royal Family of course, she was clearly Harry’s happiness.
But when that interview was aired how could any Brit feel anything but slapped in the face by two extraordinarily over-privileged people we had believed to be good and decent?
Looking back at that car-crash interview (what royal interview has ever been anything less?) they were sheep led to Oprah’s slaughterhouse.
The doe-eyes and soft-timbred voice of the master interviewer barely disguising her glee at getting these dunderheads, feeding off their own preening vanity, from spilling all.
But it’s not much of a defence for all the trouble and anguish they caused the late Queen, King Charles, Prince William and quite frankly pretty much every Brit.
But we are where we are, and the realisation is no doubt setting in even in Harry and Meghan’s candyfloss brains that beyond the fact they were once royal, they have nothing to offer. It’s unkind I know, but they are just too thick. Trust me, you have nothing to learn from either of them. Unless mixed-fruit jam making is your thing of course.
Outside the fact they were royals, they are just uninteresting as people. I think Netflix (and Spotify) got this and seized on their short-term notoriety.
One industry insider nailed it saying: “Netflix were clever in that they got a hell of a lot of viewers for the first documentary series, and knew, realistically, it would prove the zenith of content from the Montecito pair.
“They’re not unhappy with how things turned out – they got those initial hits, and produced one of the most talked-about shows of all time.”
To absolutely no-one’s surprise figures for her most recent show With Love, Meghan – which saw Megs literally wittering on to a few celebs we hardly knew – were dismal and it is unlikely there will be any more shows made.
Indeed With Love, Meghan failed to break into Netflix’s top 300 programmes for the first half of 2025 and was even thrashed by old episodes of Suits.
Meanwhile Prince Harry’s ill-fated vanity project “Polo” ranked at a disastrous 3,436 out of 7,000 shows and was only watched by 500,000 people.
One insider said: “No one in Hollywood rates them anymore or wants to be around them, especially her. People are bored with them.”
Now, whether that “insider” is real is up for debate – but we can say without equivocation the sentiment is 100% real. Don’t feel too bad for them.
They’ve had a good run and I think they might just scrape by on that £78m. Bye-bye Harry and Megs. You won’t be missed.