As ever/WLM2- puts the boasting into hosting

[AtIusvue]

Continuing the on from the As ever thread

• Funny article from Jan Moir

https://archive.ph/UfTPx

• Turns out Chrissy wasn’t the only known bully that Meg invited onto the show. David Chang has serious anger issues and has bullied staff

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/meghan-markle-s-shameless-pr-stunt-with-david-chang-is-disgusting-b1244549.html

• Megs new show hasn’t appeared in the Top ten on NF in the UK or US, which she had done for the first series. NF aren’t promoting it other that in the ‘new this week’ section. You also have to scroll along to find it.

• No stock sold out yet

The thing is, she wasn’t exactly ambushed, she knew where she was going to be interviewed, and she expected to answer questions, if she’d read a book in the recent past she would have been able to recall it. She couldn’t even call to mind a children’s book to enthuse over. You would think if she was actually reading to her children there would be a favourite.

I wonder sometimes what the RF talked to Meghan about. I suspect she dominated conversations and made everything about herself. She has no cultural interests and nothing in common with any of them really. A bit like Diana.

The RF are experts at small talk.
Perhaps they asked her if she’d come far.

Good Grief - she's an actress by training surely she can adlib something? Either:

• name something you have seen on the bestseller list
• or you say you love going back to the classics and mention Jane Austen/Charlotte Bronte/Mark Twain or anything you read at school
• Or you say you are currently into non-fiction and reel off lifestyle books about homes/gardens/entertainment as hello! you are promoting a lifestyle brand
• Or you give a tinkly laugh and say "Oh these days I mostly read The Very Hungry Caterpillar/Peppa Pig/Pippi Longstocking/Harry Potter to my kids"

It just shows the lack of prep to be filming in a bookshop and giving a who word salad about reading and not have been prepared for a question about what she reads.

But she was promoting a BOOKSHOP.

It would take five minutes to learn a couple of suitable replies - this is her job.

When you compare it to what people say about the late Queen and her attention to detail and knowledge of the place she was visiting - well it is just breathtaking incompetence.

I think that she's really not cut out for any kind of role like this.

It shows how completely unfit she was to be a working Royal.

Yeah, all of these questions will have been approved in advance so she should have had a suitable answer ready.

Clearly she thinks it's more important to let everyone know how 'busy' she is.

If she had an ounce of intelligence she would have said the last book she read was “Meet me at the lake” seeing as supposedly she has the rights to produce the film, it would have been an ideal time to promote her future film project, or maybe she didn’t mention it because the likelihood of her producing a film is pie in the sky and always was 🤔

Now that’ explains why she called them all racists! 😂

Yes, it was genuinely beyond her.

Meghan's biggest problem is that she refused to take any advice or help with the role and that she has this innate need to be acknowledged as the expert on everything.

She was offered Sophie (now Duchess of Edinburgh) as a mentor ... refused by Meghan.

The Queen requested Samantha Cohen guide them with her 17 years experience as the Queen's own press secretary - it was meant to be 6 months transitional help but she stayed 18 months because they couldn't get a replacement - Cohen has since said the role was like working with teenagers.

The Queen offered her one of her own experienced equerries, Lt. Col. Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah but this was rejected by Meghan as "insulting". Meghan's friend and author Omid Scobie wrote “Though a charming and intelligent man, it stood out like a sore thumb to Meghan and her friends,”

I think with retrospect we can see what a huge job the Palace staff did with Harry. A decade ago Harry was a popular royal and believed to be friendly and charming through a carefully curated palace image that involved him mostly working with his own interests - the military, playing polo, Africa - or some combination of these. Since he dropped out of royal life, and despite paying millions to top rated US PR firms such as Sunshine Sachs and WME - Harry's image is mostly as a bitter and miserable man who makes his money whining about his family.

I have just read It’s Always the Husband by CL Taylor .
Very good .

Excellent points, especially about Harry. Funny how he was always so critical of "the men in the grey suits", when they clearly did a good job for him.

Well said!

There's a little interview in the Telegraph today with a former butler of the King's (please don't comment on it being in the Telegraph, I just like the puzzles!)
He describes the family being really close and that he can't reconcile the things Harry has said with what he saw and experienced first hand. He talks warmly about both Charles and Camilla, describing Charles as very thoughtful, calm and hard-working. He also writes about the first time he met Harry, that H chased him and pelted him with water balloons. Harry was 19 at the time, FFS. If one of my sons at 19 had behaved like that towards someone we were employing, he'd have been called out for being a dick!

But she can be authentic now, surely? 😉

Diana did genuinely love the theatre and ballet. It was a real passion for her.

FWIW I'm currently reading 38 Londres St by Phillipe Sands and it's fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. I also have Real Tigers by Mick Herron and The Waiting by Michael Connelly lined up for later.

I'm reading "The Space Between Black and White" by Esua Jane Goldsmith, a memoir about growing up mixed race in a white working class family and community in London in the 1950s. She didn't know her father, who was Ghanaian. There was no one else who looked like her in her family or school. She had some hill to climb, but what an incredible woman of achievement.

I've noted down some of these books so that I have a better answer should I be asked what was the last book I read- and I've managed to do this whilst working full time, three kids, a dog and no help.

(The last book I read was The Wartime Librarian's secret - when my kindle stopped working on a work trip- spoiler there is no secret and I wouldn't recommend)

I might feel judged (or fail to name) the books I have just read, but could easily name Middlemarch as an all time favourite.

Plus some childhood classics.

And also happily admit to Famous Five, Wilkie Collins and Patricia Leitch!

Am re-reading The Red Tent by Anita Diamont for the umpteenth time. I love it.

Also the latest by Lynda La Plante - The Scene Of The Crime. A lot of my books are crime novels, some authors I have everything they’ve ever written, not that I went and bought the books by the yard. It just evolved, so for eg, I bought the first Martina Cole ever published and for a couple of years later I’d ask people if they’d read the book and no one I knew had heard of her. But I was hooked from that first book and years later when people would ask, ‘oh have you read any Martina Cole’ I’d say ‘yes, I’ve been reading her for years now’. I have to say though that I think her latter offerings haven’t been up to the mark. And it’s funny because about 12 years ago my best friend from school contacted me and we rekindled our friendship. It turns out she was a fan as well and if I’m in my hometown when a new book is released we go to Waterstones and buy each other a copy of it, and if I’m not in the Uk we have a copy sent to each other the day it’s published. 🤣

I like the Britishness of crime novels and I only read them if they’re set in the UK.

Then there’s also - Sisters Under The Rising Sun by Heather Morris.

I’m a big fan of books set in India, the Far East and Kenya during Colonialism.

Anyway, the first book is only read in the car when I have to queue up for half an hour everyday to collect a grandson from school. It’s the way they do the traffic system so I make it a nice wait with a book, a flask and a biscuit. The other two are read randomly depending on what I fancy.

And thinking about Meghan not being a reader - perhaps she is and felt no one needed to know what with her being a Duchess and all that.

As a fan of Samin Nosrat I watched that episode. So much of it was dull. Why are they making a book? It’s a niche craft, we don’t actually learn how to do it and the banal chitchat is mind numbing.
The cooking part is marginally better thanks to Nosrat. Why does she do the whole wide eyed thing?

@Weepixie The Red Tent is a great book!