Omid Scobie's new book

[boxedandribboned]

Heads up, Omid is back on the PR trail...

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/harry-meghan-author-omid-scobie-31362434

BTW, can anyone explain why he's Harper's Royal reporter when he only seems to have access to or report on Harry and Meghan? It's a bit strange.

i think it’s laughable that Harry is considered reformed because he married a beautiful, wealthy, semi-famous woman who, by her own words, until meeting him was never treated as a black woman.

His does that make him an authority on anything related to the issues of racism?

https://www.insider.com/meghan-markle-black-woman-uk-racism-netflix-show-2022-12?amp

The Queens death was announced quite a bit earlier than 6.30 pm. I thought it was announced sometime in the afternoon around 2.30 or 3 pm.

@Viviennemary . HM died just after 3.00pm ( as noted on her death certificate) and the official announcement was at 6.30 pm .

No it was officially announced at 6.30, but it was very clear to anyone watching the coverage that she’d already died and the anchors were just waiting for the go ahead to announce. I believe Lady Colin Campbell announced her death earlier in the afternoon having heard from her own sources (imo not a good thing to have done).

This is what Harry didn’t appreciate if he was appealing for the announcement to be made later to accommodate him. The cat was already out of the bag.

It's so sad to think Edward, Sophie and Andrew missed precious final moments with their mother because a petulant grandchild was having a tantrum and caused them to leave too late.
(Yes I know Andrew is vile but we're talking about someone losing their mother.)

Agree, @JSMill it seems a crime to rob anyone of those last moments.

Yet from experience I wouldn’t personally call those dying hours “precious” . The person is usually unconscious and shutting down physiologically. There cannot be any meaningful exchanges, declarations or promises… just anguished presence and hand holding. Not to say there is no value to it all, but for me personally the “precious” moments are long gone by this stage.

I'm not sure blaming Princess Anne for being asked to leave Frogmore is a good idea (assuming that snippet is in the book).

Each snippet makes me more sure that this doesn't have Harry and Meghan's approval (although I do think that it is probable he is using things he was told years ago and claiming they are recent). Scobie is usually careful in what he says in media interviews but the book seems to be written by his gutter press side.

Looking at the timings I'm not sure they'd have made it even if they'd taken off immediately?

Even flying private it takes time to get up there, transfer to a car and drive to Balmoral, and IIRC tthey just wouldn't have had time before the Queen died

Just looked it up: reportedly they arrived at Balmoral at 5pm (3.50 landing at Aberdeen then the car journey)

So even if there hadn't been an hour's delay at Northolt - for whatever reason - they'd have reached Aberdeen at 2.50 and still been too late to get there before the Queen died

The plane Andrew, Edward, Sophie and William were on was originally scheduled to leave at 1.30pm (this comes from the flight manifesto). It was then delayed for an hour and ten minutes, meaning it took off at 2.39pm. The flight took 1 hour and 10 minutes, so they landed at Aberdeen at 3.50pm, And yes, then had to drive for at least an hour to get to Balmoral.

So, even in a best case scenario, they would have landed at Aberdeen at around 2.40pm, and not had time to drive to Balmoral before QEII’s death.

The weather was pretty bad that afternoon however, and so a helicopter transfer from Aberdeen wasn’t possible. We know it had been clearer earlier in the day because Charles had flown in by helicopter from Dumfries to Balmoral. Who knows if they’d been able to get there in time if it had still been clear enough between 2.30 and 3pm to fly?

The eviction from Frogmore was only earlier this year .

Who else could have repeated the quite specific details such as silence in the car ? William drove so there were only 4 of them !

Yes, Scobie has been getting fairly recent information

Oh dear. It would seem that Scobie has fallen victim to very similar circumstances that surrounded the initial leaked copies of “Spare” 🤔author Omid Scobie criticises translated extracts of royal book www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67531059 See here

Assume a typo and you meant Ann

no idea why Sophie was there
bows out of thread again as it’s just groundhog

" I think it's happened" is strangely impersonal. I just can't imagine Harry saying that about Queenie. "Granny's gone" or something similar I can see him saying, but "I think it's happened"?

I think a PP is right and the text to OS was from M. Strange thing to do, alert your media mouthpiece as a top priority.

Ann was already there. Sophie was very close to the Queen so would have wanted to be there. They probably would have been too late anyway but I'm sure they wouldn't have been too happy waiting for Harry when they knew how serious their mother's condition was.

No wonder they didn’t want her there. She cannot keep her mouth shut about anything.

So if none of the details in the book came from Harry and Meghan or their team, then I presume we can expect a formal announcement from the Sussex’s that the book is a work of fiction and they have informed their lawyers and will be suing Scobie? particularly since it is proven that they collaborated with him for Finding Freedom they would surely want to be crystal clear regarding Endgame. Somehow I don’t think so. This has their paw prints all over of it, pair of fools.

Sophie was loved like a daughter by the queen. It is well documented.

The Catherine not talking in the car thing - is that it, do you think? That’s her major crime, along with not wanting to share lip balm. Why would she want to talk to either of them in the circumstances, and why wouldn’t she want a few minutes of quiet after a stressful engagement in the midst of grief, and the knowledge that her role has suddenly changed dramatically? I just don’t understand what negative spin OS can have on Catherine for this, other than a repeat of cold and British versus warm and Californian.

I think it was a wise policy, the conversation would have been reported, no doubt. Kate would have been criticised for whatever she said, whatever the intention.

Where are you reading the excerpts?

People magazine has released excerpts which are being reported in other news media.

ParisMatch is serialising extracts too - though that is behind a paywall, so there’s just translations of extracts on twitter from it, which is what Omid is complaining about.

The quote from Scobie saying that Kate talked more about Meghan than to her is really strange given that 100% of what we know about their relationship came from Meghan and Harry.