Prince harry

Stockholm The House of Sussex may have flopped in Britain, but elsewhere it does seem to be inspiring others. Here in Stockholm a trendy podcast Värvet (The Task), known for host Kristoffer Triumf’s in-depth interviews with media and entertainment figures, had a surprise guest recently: Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden. He was not so gauche as to attack the constitution or to drop any Prince Harry-style bombs, but his presence on a podcast was seen as the latest part of a royal awokening. Even in exile, Harry has created an interesting challenge for the world’s monarchies. They can be regarded as old-fashioned — normally aligned with the state religion and run by a pensioner.

Meghan Markle has written a book for children. Of course she has. There is no celeb, no matter how busy, who doesn’t have a children’s book in them, because children’s books, you might think if you didn’t know better, don’t need plot or character or much in the way of style. It was either that, or a cookbook. The Bench, for that is the name, is based apparently on a poem Meghan wrote for her husband for father’s day, a month after little Archie was born. Because that’s what you do with a small baby, isn’t it… you write a poem. It’s short, it would seem, but then William Nicholson’s wonderful, illustrated book, Clever Bill, which Maurice Sendak thought a masterpiece, had fewer than a hundred words.

Prince Harry is now chief impact officer for BetterUp, a Californian corporate consultancy whose ‘mission’ is to sell online life coaching with — in his words, — ‘innovation, impact and integrity’. Harry may not realise it, but he is the latest celebrity frontman for the rapidly growing, broadly unregulated and frequently dubious corporate ‘coaching’ industry. And you might not realise it, but Harry, Duke of Malibu is your future, because California’s today is America’s tomorrow and Britain’s next week. BetterUp is one of a group of Californian companies on the growing, corporate edge of life coaching.

Nothing duller for those of us not in therapy than listening to people who are in therapy talking about it, something they seem to like to do incessantly, at every opportunity. For this reason, my heart sank during the Oprah interview — which I’d been looking forward to tremendously — when early into his appearance, Prince Harry made an unsmiling reference to the ‘many years’ he had spent ‘doing the work — and doing my own learning’. Here we go, I thought. Sure enough, not long later he was telling the ludicrously softball interviewer of his family, his father, particularly: ‘they only know what they know. I’ve tried to educate them, through the process that I’ve been educated.’ Difficult to imagine how much the Windsors must have enjoyed that.

At the tender age of 36, Prince Harry has got his first job since leaving the royal family. Congratulations to him. As most teenagers will know it is both a liberating and formative experience. Paper boy, shopfloor dogsbody, chief impact officer – the roles can be unglamorous, but they're almost always worth it. Harry’s big post-Megxit break into the world of work is everything we could have expected. He will be working as something called a ‘chief impact officer’ at a Silicon Valley firm called BetterUp, which offers professional-development and mental-health coaching to businesses and their employees. Going by BetterUp’s website, it seems to peddle therapeutic burble to firms with more money than sense.

Where does one find freedom these days? A billion dollar Silicon Valley tech company now appears to be the answer. Mr S was delighted to read in the Wall Street Journal this afternoon that Prince Harry, 36, will be taking up his first formal job post-Megxit as the chief impact officer at tech start up BetterUp in California.  The Duke of Sussex will be providing 'proactive coaching' for personal development, increased awareness and 'an all-round better life' at the startup which provides professional coaching, mental health advice and 'immersive learning.'  BetterUp was founded in 2013 and recently raised $125m from international investors to fund expansion which valued the company at $1.7bn.

Gstaad Some of you may have noticed that I have not commented at all about the ongoing soap opera and latest brouhaha concerning the halfwit and Meghan Macbeth. That’s because I decided long ago that the best way to counter their publicity machine is never to mention them. But I’ve also done something that most of the hacks writing about the couple have not: I’ve been a guest on Oprah’s show twice, on one occasion by my little old self for a whole hour. Although wince-inducing, squirming, cringeworthy and gushing, The Oprah Show always has a theme and, more importantly, a hook. The hook is what will make people’s ears prick up.

The institution waited two days before responding to the Oprah interview with a statement that acknowledged the allegations around race were concerning, but it omitted any condemnation of racism. In just twelve seconds this morning, Prince William tackled the central charge head on.  https://twitter.com/MattSunRoyal/status/1369974057140166656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw The brothers are riven, in their trenches and communicating via chat show hosts and off the record briefings to newspapers TV doorstepping — shouting a question at someone without prior agreement while armed with a camera and microphone — can be a fruitless task. Doing it when the target is a royal is a soulless endeavour. This morning, at a school in east London, fortune favoured the bold.