“Woke Royals”

The image of Harry and Meghan was perhaps the most telling of the year when it comes to their new relationship with the royals.

He was in a sombre suit with a red poppy and military medals, she in a long black dress. They held hands as they walked through Los Angeles National Cemetery on Remembrance Sunday in November to lay a floral tribute to the fallen.

In what was seen as a flagrant publicity stunt, the couple had chosen to release the pictures after Harry had been refused permission for a wreath to be laid at the Cenotaph on his behalf that day, alongside those of other members of his family.

The first episode of Harry and Meghan’s podcast Archewell Audio introduces a world where chefs don’t cook, they “empower communities through food”; where people don’t do things, they “manifest” them; where people don’t “say”, they “share” and so on. It’s all blandly Californian. Like Goop but without the fun.

This opener explores the importance of “the power of connection” in the past year. Harry and Meghan introduce audio clips of various celebrities, including James Corden, Elton John, George the Poet, Stacey Abrams, Matt Haig, Naomi Osaka and Deepak Chopra, talking about what they’ve learnt in 2020.

A multi-million podcast deal between Britain’s Prince Harry, his wife Meghan, and Spotify may prove to be bad business, with a YouGov poll indicating that 89 per cent of Britons are not interested in what they have to say.

Saying he’s shocked that anyone “takes them seriously”, he slammed Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, for their woke efforts to do good.

“Prince Harry – surely no one takes him seriously?” he told The Matt Morgan Podcast. “He’s just a mad little kid.

“I don’t like do-gooders in general, they f***ing wind me up.”

Prince Andrew’s spokeswoman has refused to comment on a report that he stayed in the New York mansion of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in April 2001, despite the duke denying doing so in his infamous Newsnight interview.

The refusal to repeat the denial comes after the Daily Mail uncovered a fax that said the prince had stayed at a “private address in New York” on 11 April and its sources confirmed this was Epstein’s £60m home in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

This directly contradicts Prince Andrew’s account of his movements that day in his interview with the Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis last year, when he said: “I wasn’t staying there. I may have visited but definitely didn’t, definitely, definitely no, no, no activity.”