Still recovering from a trauma of her exit from the French Open because the beastly tournament officials insisted on her speaking to cruel-eyed, question-firing sports journalists after matches, it's a comfort to see that tennis star Naomi Osaka found enough courage to face the fiends at the Telegraph's Luxury magazine.
Frail Osaka gathered up the shreds of her self-confidence to answer questions about her favourite luxuries.
And by an amazing coincidence, most of those luxuries turn out to be products that she's been well-paid to plug.
There was her Tag-Heuer watch, supplied by her sponsors Tag, er, Heuer. Then came her favourite pair of Levis, by astounding chance the very jeans brand she advertises.
She likes to relax, Osaka told fans, with the odd glass of Soto sake which - what are the chances? - she part owns and has a role as their creative director.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any more parallel universe, her favourite designer turns out to be from Louis Vuitton, the exact same posh luggage house that also sponsors her.
So, there you go. Naomi Osaka. Quite OK about talking to the media as long as the price tag-heuer is high enough.
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Writer Lady Colin Campbell's petition to ask the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to surrender their titles rolls on with nearly 61,000 signatures so far.
She's quite right. Only someone with a solid brass neck would cling onto a title just for the sake of improving their public profile and commercial gain.
Just say, for example, you'd married a duke's son after knowing him for just five days and then divorced only 14 months later would you feel comfortable hanging onto the title you'd gained through the marriage a whole 47 years earlier?
Of course you wouldn't. And neither would Lady Colin Campbell, who had amassed a small fortune from her series of weird royal biographies, TV appearances and podcasts.
It's just that Lady Colin Campbell looks so much better on the dust jackets than her own name, Georgia Arianna Ziadie.
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While they delight in the mischief their newborn's daughter's name has caused, something is about to take the gilt off the gingerbread in the glittering lives of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Despite months of grovelling, lobbying and stanning, they are not going to be the first royals to meet US president Joe Biden.
His first royal one on, er, One will come when he meets the Queen at Windsor Castle following this week's G7 summit in Cornwall.
Joe and HM will inspect a guard of honour, share some socially distanced drinks and inspect some American Revolution-era treasures from the castle library.
And in Montecito? Stand by for some well-timed baby pictures to claw back the headlines.
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Princess Diana's Earl Spencer can congratulate himself on using his extensive archive to seal the BBC's fate in Lord Dyson's Panorama reports.
Through Spencer's notes and jottings the investigation learned how Diana was 'fired up' and 'enraged' by a series of forged documents provided by Bashir to trick her into an interview.
But we wonder if there are any other - this time completely genuine papers - in Charles Spencer's archive that might have 'fired up' or 'enraged' his sister?
There was, for instance, a particularly sharp exchange of letters between brother and sister about Diana's request to live on Althorp - the Spencer family's ancestral estate - following her separation from Prince Charles in 1993.
The princess was seeking a peaceful refuge in Garden House, a lodge on the 450 Northamptonshire acres where she grew up.
Brother Charles at first agreed to rent her - yes, rent her - the cottage for a bargain £12,000 a year and Diana was so keen she immediately hired her favourite interiors expert Dudley Poplack to remodel the residence.
Two weeks later, though, her brother had a crushing change of mind and told the princess in one letter: 'I know you will be disappointed but I know I am doing the right thing for my wife and children. I am just sorry I cannot help my sister.'
This certainly seemed to 'fire up' the princess no end.
Her final eye-blistering letter on the matter was returned unopened by Spencer with a covering note saying: 'Dearest Duch (his childhood nickname for Diana), Knowing the state you were in the other night when you hung up on me, I doubt whether reading this will help our relationship.'
Could letters like this have left Diana feeling so abandoned that she fell into bad company and bad habits? Maybe Lord Dyson could have had the opportunity to see them and make a judgement?
If Earl Spencer cannot find the letters in his meticulous records, don't worry.
They were entered as evidence in the collapsed Old Bailey trial of Diana's former footman, Paul Burrell in 2002. We're sure he'd let the earl have some copies.
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What could have provoked Prince Harry's baffling attack on the American Constitution?
Could it not be the First Amendment that's got his goat, but Article 1, which contains a paragraph that could sink forever the Duchess of Sussex's presidential ambitions?
The little-read rule - called the Foreign Emoluments Clause - was drawn up by America's founding fathers to prevent Britain from retaking the country by stealth.
Because under the clause anyone with a foreign title or income from a foreign power is automatically ineligible to stand for public office in the US. No exceptions. You know, like the Duchess of Sussex.
It states: 'No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office or Profit of Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince, or Foreign State.'
And as Meghan's title comes directly from the Queen, that would seem to put the tin hat on her White House fantasies.
One constitutional expert explained: 'The key phrase is 'of any kind whatever'. It is very wide-ranging, all-inclusive and that's exactly what it was intended to be.'
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Happy Mondays legend Sean Ryder tells how despite a previous addiction to heroin he is full of pink-cheeked health these days and has never felt better.
By strange coincidence Monday was the day Ryder the former registered addict would collect his Methadone prescription from his local pharmacy in Manchester.
A friend who used to work there explained: 'He'd come in, hand over his script, tip a dose straight down his throat and drop the vial on the floor. If anyone complained, he told them to 'f*ck off'.'
So, not very happy - not even on Mondays with a skinful of substitute skag.
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Baby Lilibet Diana should be grateful she dodged a far worse combination.
According to the Duchess of Sussex's sister Samantha, Meghan's mum's family nickname was Dodi. Yes. Really.
Imagine bearing that cross for life: Dodi-Diana.
I can almost see Mohamed Al-Fayed dusting down the old Harrods statue. Prince Harry is furious about questions over whether it was proper to siphon off hundreds of thousands of pounds from the defunct Sussex Royal charity and inject it into Travalyst, his eco-tourism company.
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As the Duchess of Sussex watches her one-time BFF Jessica Mulroney disappear down the rubbish chute of her life in the Black Lives Matter row, she should perhaps think carefully about her future.
Meghan and the Mail on Sunday will soon begin knocking lumps out of each other in their High Court copyright battle over a letter she sent to the duchess's father, Thomas Markle.
The MoS won the first skirmish, although the battle proper will focus on whether Meghan breached her own privacy by authorising her friends to plant stories in friendly media outlets to improve her image.
But just days ago the duchess had to hand over to the court a coded list identifying five friends who are suspected by the Mail of leaking stories to help their royal pal.
Their loyalty and the wall of omerta thrown up by those closest to the duchess, however, has made this nut pretty uncrackable for the Mail's legal team.
If only there were some friend they could go to who knows absolutely everything about Meghan's backstage dramas, her relationship with her father, and her secret briefings and instructions to friends but is now, maybe, not so close.
Someone she might have just fallen out with very badly. If only.
Oh. Now, wait just one minute...
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Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab's half-witted public performance isn't something caused by pandemic pressure or the China crisis. Oh no. He's always been that dim.
During an earlier ministerial role, aides would amuse themselves by seeing how many 'a's they could get away with inserting into his surname on official letters before he noticed.
They got up to 'Raaaab' before he twigged.
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Which palace resident is breaking out on cold sweats over whether racism allegations feature in the tacitly authorised biography of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Finding Freebies?
Apparently they allegedly once asked a black palace employee - about to go on holiday in Africa - whether their family lived up an actual family tree.
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Did Boris Johnson leave a tantalising trail of breadcrumbs leading to the real reason for Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill's public execution in his letter accepting Britain's most senior civil servant's resignation?
In his hand-scrawled note, the PM takes the trouble to thank Sir Mark for his 'many useful and amusing notes you have scribbled to me in Cabinet.'
Some may recall there was a less useful note in an anonymous posting on the Civil Service Twitter account last month taking Johnson to task for his slavish support of his in-house Rasputin, Dominic Cummings
It read: 'Arrogant and offensive. Can you image having to work with these truth twisters.'
Social media has been ablaze with speculation that the PM's goodbye note was a not-so-sly signpost to his suspicions.
Of course, those close to Sir Mark say he would never stoop so low and there is no suggestion whatsoever that he was in any way responsible to the tweet. No. Really. None at all.
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What do you get if you cross Donald Trump and Bill Clinton? You get found unconscious and unresponsive in the women's wing of the Merrimack County Jail in New Hampshire before you can co-operate with prosecutors.
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Meanwhile, no-one is looking forward to a post lockdown haircut more than the Prime Minister.
The real reason for Johnson's dishevelled do has been that the PM is as bald as a coot underneath his artfully woven and gelled comb-over.
And as the days rolled on, this miracle of modern thatching became dangerously unstable.
'If he let his hair fall naturally and brushed it back from his forehead he'd look like Andy from Little Britain,' explained one Westminster veteran.
'He has a bit of a Sampson complex and thinks his wild hair makes him look more virile and dynamic.'
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NOT RISHI SUNAK'S PROJECT SPEED DIARY
Day One:
'Now, Rishi, mea parum Crassus,' the PM tells me, 'the important thing to remember about Project Speed is that whatever you do, you cannot under any circs allow the bally thing to drop below 50mph or the entire economy of Britain will blow up. Or was that something else?'
'I think it was a film with Keanu Reeves, Prime Minister'.
'A kinematograph eh? Well, remember it anyway. As Dominic says, pedal to the mental.'
'Metal, not mental.'
'Rem acu tetigisti, Rishi lad. ' Dominic is absolutely not mental.'
Day Two:
The connecting door between Numbers 10 and 11 flies open with a crash and the human haystack slides in on his Union Jack socks looking like an albino orangutan who's been dragged backwards through the New & Lingwood sale rack.
'Boom! Kerpow! It all came to me in a flash last night. Project Speed: Our Own TikTok Movie. Biff! The yooth will love it.'
'Right, Prime Minister...'
'
Project Speed. Imagine. You're zip-zooming across the country at tremendous speed, splashing cash for construction - a bridge here, a factory there, grateful hoi polloi cheering everywhere you go. Your logo? A speeding golden lightning bolt flashing across the screen. Pretty decent, eh?'
'Prime Minister are you sure you didn't fall asleep in front of the telly? That sounds just like The Flash.'
"A flash? Steady there Rishi old top. Sounds a bit French to me. They ban anything too saucy on TikTok.'
Day Three:
'What do you think of the slogan 'Build Build Build?' the PM barks down the phone at me.
Cautiously, 'One of yours, or one of Dominic's?'
'All mine. A one hundo p visio Boris.'
'Of course it's brilliant but someone like Starmer might say it sounds like Bills Bills Bills, or maybe Spend Spend Spend, you know that pools winner who blew every penny?'
'Woah Rishi boy. Are you coming over all Trotsky on me?
'I'm no Communist but your job in all this is to grease the way for our friends and donors, to spray the cash around our wealth makers - in particulari the party wealth makers - like a drunken Politburo commissar with incontinent coffers.'
'But what about the jobs?'
'Spot on. There's nothing more important than keeping Dominic and me in Number 10.'
Day Four:
The PM invites me onto the Number 10 rose garden picnic rug to discuss his New Deal for the nation.
'We're going to ginger them all up with our New Deal, a £5 billion blockbuster just like Roosevelt saving America from the Depression.'
'Well, he was quite a controversial figure, PM. I studied the New Deal at Lincoln. Trying to stack the courts in his favour, unemployment at an average of 17 per cent, anti African-American labour laws. It wasn't all Hoover dams.'
The PM leaps up as is he's sat on a Taser.
'Oof! That's it! We'll get the hoover guy James Dyson in on the Speed committee. He can sell any old overpriced tosh to anyone. Rishi, you're a genius.
'Magna cum laude, as Carrie always says when I make too much noise in the bedroom. Woof!'
Day Five:
'So I'm going to be lowered down on a zipwire with a Union Jack hard hat right onto the podium while 'Boom' by Snoop Dogg is playing on the PA.'
The PM is outlining his and Dominic's 'Build Build Build' speech for Dudley.
'Or, I crash through a wall of boxes in a bulldozer and the boxes have got pictures of naysayers like that ghastly grammar grub Starmer and other assorted Boris blockers. Tally-ho! Boris to the rescue again.'
'Or I'm carried in on the shoulders of grateful workers thanking me for saving their jobs, like Horatius at the Bridge after saving Rome.'
'Didn't Horatius end up blind in one eye and crippled for life with an Etruscan spear up his bum?'
'Pshaw. Mere detail. Stick to your faba computatis and leave the Classics to Caesar Britannis. Id est, me.'
The PM turns on the TV to show me a recording of the riots in Brixton. He seems strangely nostalgic.
'Ahh. Smashed furniture, broken glass, terrified plod on the run and plebs scattering for cover.
' All you need is Dave doing his pig's head routine and you've got a full-on Buller trashing,' he sighed.
'Mind you, these chaps are pretty lightweight,' he went on. 'In my day they'd have set fire to that cop car and at least a couple of us would have spent a night in the clink. And we were doing it in tailcoats not trackies.'
Their Beverly Hills home is borrowed, the private jet that flew them from Canada to Los Angeles was provided gratis and even baby Archie's first birthday broadcast was a giant global plug for Oprah Winfrey's TV book club.
And their second wedding anniversary was spent - according to their biographer Omid Scobie - phoning the 'vendors who helped bring their Windsor Castle ceremony and reception to life', presumably to secure future discounts.
Little wonder then, that Scobie's new biography about the Sussexes' struggle for independence 'Finding Freedom' has been scathingly dubbed 'Finding Freebies' by Buckingham Palace courtiers.
We're especially keen to find out if Scobie has been brave enough to name names on the racism he has previously claimed duchess Meghan suffered from members of the Royal Family, 'even inside the House of Windsor'.
We - and at least four sets of royal lawyers representing different households - are giddy with anticipation.
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As the Duchess of Cambridge reportedly instructs lawyers over Tatler's unflattering cover story cruelly portraying her as a flaky, out-of-her depth social climber, the curious past life of the society mag's editor Richard Dennen reemerges.
The acid-tongued former fashion hack studied History of Art at the University of St Andrews at the exactly same time as Prince William and Kate and counts himself as a friend of the couple.
Dennen - Dicky to his friends - claims to have met William 'a couple of times' and says he has holidayed with Kate in France, but is vague on dates.
He told the Belfast Telegraph (there's posh for you): 'The summer I graduated, we went on two holidays together, back-to-back in France. I think she's lovely.'
Clearly circumstances have changed.
The only evidence of this friendship, though, seems to be one heavily edited, dubious looking PIntrest snap.
Alas, as so often happens after St Andrews Kate and Dennen went their separate ways. She to be Queen, he to be, well, nobody.
'He's clearly still bitter and has a very odd idea about friendship' said one alumnus.
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Why did Home Secretary Priti Patel make such a pig's ear of her performance of the voice of the government at Friday's press briefing?
Well, we haven't ruled out complete stupidity yet, but could it have been altitude sickness?
To make sure that pint-sized Priti wasn't dwarfed by her two co-stars, Number 10 staff constructed a special raised dais for her to stand on so she could see over the lectern.
One Westminster colleague explained: 'It's true, Priti is very short. But she makes up for it by being quite wide too, so you still get a tremendous sense of value.'
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While Kensington Palace and Tatler kick lumps out of each other over whether the Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan did or didn't row over bridesmaids' tights, it could pay to look at the source of the story, author Anna Pasternak.
In 1994 she hailed her breathless Mills and Boon-style book Princess in Love as an 'old fashioned scoop' on the romance between Princess Diana and James Hewitt. Well it was certainly 'old', the story had actually been broken by a newspaper three years earlier.
Then there was the highly disputed account of the breakdown of her marriage to amiable Old Etonian journalist Bill Coles.
Let's hope this graceless squabble with the palace doesn't put off the Gotham Group, which has acquired movie rights to her most recent work, Untitled:The Real Wallis Simpson, 'the worst biography of Wallis Simpson ever written' according to critics.
As the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are both long dead, at least they won't be able to complain - unlike KP which describes Anna's article as 'a swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations.'
Why do people seem to take such an instant dislike to poor Anna?
'It saves time later,' explained one former colleague.
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ITN's baby-faced News at Ten anchor Tom Bradby tells Times readers how the Duchess of Sussex took him by surprise when she opened up to him during the former royal couple's South African tour about 'how bad' palace life had become.
Really? Not that much of a surprise, surely? Only a few months ago Bradby was telling anyone who'd listen how he and the Sussexes had worked on the questions with Harry and Meghan before they started filming.
He goes on to tell of his own struggles with insomnia. He should try reading one of his own ditchwater-dull thrillers - that always does the trick for us.
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Zara Phillips is following firmly in the hoof prints of her mother Princess Anne, husband Mike Tindall has revealed.
The former England rugby star explains that while he takes on the lion's share of home schooling for their two children in lockdown, Zara is off with her horses.
As Prince Philip once said of Anne: "If it doesn't fart or eat hay, she isn't interested."
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While Prince Harry bonds with his ever so slightly strange father figure David Foster in Beverly Hills, those close to his real life pa are quietly doing the maths on the Sussex fortunes.
Charles is expecting to fork out the thick end of £4 million on Harry and his family for security and living expenses during their first 12 months in the US.
Meanwhile, friends are trying to convince him to turn off the tap.
One said: 'The grand total will be nearly two Frogmore Cottages. The Duke of Sussex is a not a troubled kid finding his way. He is a middle-aged man who still sends all his bills to his father. It has to end."
So surely Harry can look to his new Foster dad - worth around $80 million - to bail him out? Not so much.
In a documentary on the 70-year-old music mogul released last year, Foster revealed: 'My kids, they don’t have trust funds. They don’t have millions of dollars in the bank. Well, if they do, it’s not because of me.'
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ROYAL BIOGRAPHER OMID SCOBIE: OFFICIALLY NOT MY DIARY
Monday
The phone wakes me at 3am. I can tell by the ringtone - 'I Will Survive' - that it's my super special, really secret, oh gosh this is so undercover I'll burst, tip top royal source you'll never guess.
'It's Megs, Scobes. Rise and shine, it's way too early for bed.'
I sigh. 'Er....Aren't we supposed to use the codenames to stop people finding out you're involved?'
Her voice drops a few degrees and a frost settles over my iPhone XS.
'Well, if you're going to be a baby about it. Hello, Condor, it's Eagle 1 here.'
She's concerned over who's going to write the foreword for our biography of the Sussexes' struggle for independence from the royal dictatorship.
'Can we get Nelson Mandela?'
'Not so available these days.'
'How about about Rosa Parks then?'
'Similar problem, I'm afraid.'
'Well if you can't get me a yes from at least Martin Luther King Junior or Malcolm X then Condor might need to find himself a new nest to feather. Geddit?'
Tuesday
Call Eagle 1 and Eagle 2 to wish them a happy second wedding anniversary.
I want to make sure they'd got the quarter pound of fresh white truffles I managed to buy from the head chef at Spago.
Not cheap at £2,000 a pop but it's an investment, right?
Megh...I mean Eagle 1 answers the phone and after a long talk about her favorites Suits season, she doesn't mention the truffles at all so I ask if she got the package.
'Those mushroomy things? Sure, we got them. Harry had them in a full English fry up for breakfast this morning. He still misses your disgusting British food.'
Wednesday
Eagle 2 calls after reading through the galley proof of Finding Freedom.
'Hey howdy, partner. It's Hazza here.'
'Er..who?'
'You know, Spike Wales?'
'Um...'. 'Apache KIller?'
'No, I...'
'Oh Christ on a bike. It's me. His Royal Ruddy Highness Prince Harry, Duke of Sodding Sussex, sixth in line to the throne. Clear enough?'
'Ah, yes sir. I mean Eagle 2.'
'Well I've been going through this book and I don't mind saying I'm worried. I think we have a spy in the works. I just can't think who this anonymous cove is who told you what a stinker my brother William has been?
'How does he know so much about it? It's uncanny.'
'Well, sir, it's you, isn't it? Don't you remember the interviews?'
'Is it? Is it indeed? Cripes. Are you sure it wasn't that Greta Thunberg girl? She pretends she's a Ruski you know.'
'Positive.'
'Well, well. Be a good bloke and keep this under your hat, or your Stetson as we Beverly Hillbillies say. Granny is going to flip.'
Thursday
Hadn't heard from my 'Finding Freedom' co-writer Carolyn Durrand for weeks until she calls today to complain that people only ever mention me when they write about the book.
'We've gone through this before. I can't help it if people want to write about me.'
I hang up and mutter, 'Who wouldn't prefer to talk to me? I'm the glamorous, eyebrowed-highbrow royal writer from Harpers Bazaar magazine, not some harpie hackette from Elle, or Take-a-Break, or TV-Quick, or whatever it is she works for.'
A squeak came from the phone. 'Omid. Press the red button to end the call properly.'
Friday
'Hi Omid. I've just got some notes on the movie script'.
It's Eagle 1.
'Book,' I say.
'Yeah. At the moment. Whatever.'
She carries on.
'I'm real disappointed because I don't seem to have any kickass lines or catchphrases. There's no I'll be back or wax on wax off, or I made them an offer they couldn't refuse.'
I take a deep breath.
'Well, isn't that because your involvement is supposed to be kind of secret?'
'Oh yes, I know that, but I wrote something for you last night that you could say a friend told you. Get it? Kind of cute, right?'
There was a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a nest of writhing snakes.
She giggles terrifyingly and says, 'Just at the very end of the book one of my, ha, friends could recall me saying, "Free at last free at last, great God a-mighty we're free at last".'
I remember to breath out.
'Don't I know that from somewhere? It sounds familiar.'
She snapped, 'No I wrote it myself here at Taco Bell Towers. How're you doing getting Martin Luther King for the foreword?'
'We might have a problem there.'
Saturday
Spoke to the legal department at my publishers HarperCollins.
'I'll be frank,' says one of the lawyers vetting the content, 'We have concerns over one or two issues'.
I'm poleaxed.
'Well, as you know for a fact, it is impeccably sourced. Couldn't be stronger.'
He cleared his throat.
'Oh we don't doubt who they are. We're just starting to worry that they might be ever so slightly nuts'.
He went on, 'I mean, in the event of an action from the Queen, can they actually prove Her Majesty is really a lizard? And what about that royal who's supposed to be a reincarnation of Hitler?'
'Well the sourcing could not be better,' I stammer.
'Glad you're so confident, old boy, because if you check your contract you'll find out you're responsible for all legal costs.'
I end the call, turn off the phone and swallow a little piece of sick.
Sunday
I bite the bullet and call Eagle 1.
'Hi it's Omid'.
'Who?'
'You know, 'Omid Scobie. Your writer.'
Eagle 1 adopts an outrageously bad Hispanic accent.
'Oh, me maid Consuela. Dook and Duch they go way. No be back long time.'
I grip the phone more tightly.
'I know it's you because you used that same stupid accent on your cameo in 'Til Death.'
She can't help herself.
'It was not a cameo it was a principal supporting role in a show voted the 58th most popular on cable TV in Coos County, Oregon.'
I close in.
'I'll be quick. The lawyers are worried about some of the allegations. If you need to, can you prove to me they're all true?'
She cackles terrifyingly.
'Isn't truth just a worn out concept? I think of the writing process as more like method acting. As Brando said, if you really believe what you're saying, it becomes the truth.
'Gotta go. H is running late for his online Harvard business class. Just kidding. Archie is hogging the jigsaw and I've got to get them to play nice.
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Why is it that whenever you’ve seen a member of the Royal Family on the phone in the past two months it’s always a hardwired landline?
The Queen, Prince William, Kate and Camilla have all released official snaps during the Covid-19 lockdown showing them making calls on distinctly old-school phones.
In fact, this seems to have become policy ever since Prince Harry fell for a pair of Russian hoaxers pretending to be eco campaigner Greta Thunberg.
One courtier explains: ‘The duke used his own mobile for the call and thereby opened up all his contacts and call lists to anyone who wanted them.’
They added: ‘The security services have to assume that the Russian FSB was all over this hoax from the very beginning.
“It’s child’s play for them to extract all the information they need from the hoaxers’ own records.
‘So that means they have every family member’s mobile number, which makes life very sticky for the royal police and MI5.'
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Who could fail to be thrilled about the upcoming biography of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand?
But the very title ‘Finding Freedom’ and the fact that the authors have been graced with ‘unique access’ to Harry and Meghan indicates an ICU-level case of red carpet fever.
Royal biographers could do worse then heed the advice of the legendary Andrew Morton, who was very much against the writer becoming a shoulder to cry on.
‘All you get is a soggy shoulder. Access is all very well, but what you need are stories,’ he told a fellow writer.
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Which Kensington Palace resident was nicknamed ‘Badger’ by staff after the Olivia Colman movie The Favourite came out?
Film fans will remember that one of the duchesses in the movie tried to outdo a rival by gaslighting Colman’s Queen Anne with a blend of flattery and bullying.
The palace nickname emerged from the famous scene where the duchess tells Colman that her new make-up makes her look like a badger.
Yes, it’s got us stumped too. We can’t think of any demanding, scheming duchesses who’ve tried to manipulate vulnerable royals either.
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The FT’s media reporter Mark Di Stefano quit ahead of a cyber hacking inquiry at the paper, but could his previous employers BuzzFeed have some squeaky moments ahead?
Di Stefano resigned from the Pink ‘Un after he was accused of hacking into a sensitive Zoom call between management and staff at the Independent.
But a quick rifle through Di Stefano’s greatest hits at BuzzFeed reveals he has an uncanny hit rate when it comes to stories involving leaks and technology.
There was the row about emails from former Speaker John Bercow’s agent to the BBC about his terms for an interview.
Then there was his revelation that former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had formed a new WhatsApp group for hardcore loyalists.
And – just image the sheer blind chance of it - his scoop on Tory MPs switching from WhatsApp to Signal after a series of, er, embarrassing leaks.
There is, as yet, no police investigation into Di Stefano’s activities.
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Prince Harry’s latest creepy video – an update on his Invictus Games - from the Beverly Hills Witness Protection Program shows his new identity is coming on apace.
Blond highlights, a hair crochet that Donald Trump would be proud of, skin peels and a smoothie beard trim have given him that unmistakable Markle polish.
It’s the kind of high end personal grooming that won her the role of Wendy in TV’s Beverly Hills 90210.
You know, the character apparently caught giving oral sex to a hunk in the high school car park.
Just look at those glossy tresses bounce back into place as she emerges from under the SUV dashboard.
But Harry needs to work on his showreel production values if he wants to keep up with the fearsome pack of managers, agents, lawyers and hangers-on Meghan has assembled.
One movie veteran explained: ‘His video looks like a kidnap ransom demand shot in an underground car park.
‘All it needs is him holding a copy of that day’s LA Times as proof of life
HARRY AND THE ROYAL GRAVY TRAIN: NOT A THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE STORY
Monday
Harry had always been a happy train. Not quite first class, not quite the quickest.
But he was always so keen and boisterous that wherever he went people were happy to see him and they cheered and clapped, even when he wasn’t completely sure where he as supposed to be going.
Then one day in the repair shed, he found himself next to a train so sleek, so different that he had never seen its like before.
‘Hello, I’m Harry and I like to go fast,’ he said with a cheerful grin.
The other train peered down at him. She had a sweet smile but somehow all her signals seemed to be wrong.
‘I’m Duchess. Don’t you find these petty timetables and tracks a terrible burden on your freedom?”
Harry gulped and swallowed a piece of hot coal as the steam rose in his whistle.
‘Cor. Your buffers are gorgeous,’ was all he could say.
Tuesday
Harry had always been proud of being a royal train with its ancient ways and traditions.
He ran on coal and steam, like generations of his family of engines. It was simple, it was fun and the people who came to see him, well, how they cheered and clapped. And all he had to do was turn up.
But as he talked to Duchess, Harry learned how he had got it all wrong. He was, in fact, being used to deny passengers their social justice by carrying them.
‘But they’ve bought tickets,’ said Harry, uncertainly.
'You shouldn’t be taking them to where they think they want to go, but to where they deserve to be,’ purred Duchess.
Wednesday:
Harry was almost certain he was being told off but Duchess said it as an anti-patriarch re-educative programme.
‘Your coal and your smoke are killing people right now. You must give up fossil fuel and demand to become solar like me,’ she said.
‘But you never go anywhere. Passengers rely on me,’ said Harry, knowing as he said it that this was a mis-thought, as Duchess called it.
She flashed her solar panels furiously.
‘They are victims of an oppressive travel hegemony. They will not be free until all trains are like me,’ she said.
‘What, not going anywhere?’ asked Harry and straight away knew he shouldn’t have.
Thursday:
Sir Topham Hat was angry. Harry had refused to open his doors to passengers until they agreed to tell him how they had travelled to Palace End station.
The postmistress Mrs Elizabeth had burst into tears when Harry and Duchess told her she was raping the planet because she’d driven there in her elderly Rolls Royce.
‘But Harry,’ pleaded Sir Topham. ‘If there are no passengers there is no point to you.’
‘That’s typical of the blinkered, self-serving hierarchy of polluters,” said Harry.
'The point is not getting somewhere but how you don’t get there,’ he added, to approving nods from Duchess.
Friday:
The final straw for Sir Topham was when Harry and Duchess refused to be listed on timetables as part of a new policy of zero engagement with exploiters.
‘We regard objective, truthful timetables as a cornerstone of travel equality but we will not co-operate with a corrupt system.
‘In future we will only tell our friends when and where we are going,' said the statement they handed him.
Sir Topham shook his head and tried again, saying: 'You realise, don’t you, that if you don’t run there are no ticket sales?
'And if there are no ticket sales, there is no money to pay for your new paintwork, your specially built sidings sheds, the power you burn. Nothing.’
‘Don’t try to shackle us, you track Nazi,” said Duchess.
Saturday:
A letter on the Station Master’s doorstep was waiting for Sir Topham.
It read:
A Personal Message from The New Free Railway
After reflection we have chosen to transition into a cross-national, fully independent transport foundation.
We no longer feel able to take part in the public services of Windsor Railways with its unbearable imposition of rails and timetables.
While we expect to be wholly independent of public funding in time, we appreciate ticket-buyers’ support during this exciting period of change.
Sunday:
The sidings sheds in Union Station, Los Angeles, were very dark and very hot with rats and mice scurrying around and under the locked gates.
‘Isn’t it just typical of the international conspiracy of trackist tyrants to have a completely different track width over here?’ said Duchess.
‘Does this mean we can’t get out?’ asked Harry.
Duchess was about to say something smart and inspiring but her solar charge ran out and she spluttered into silence.
‘Hello? Can you hear me? I’d like to come out now ’ said Harry in a very small, frightened voice.
Of course no-one could hear him. Duchess had disabled their radios to prevent communications with unbelievers.
But if Harry had been able to see behind him, he’d have noticed the sign above the section of the shed they had been parked in. It read ‘Scrap’.
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