When you go to a 10-pin bowling alley you have to put up with a lot of noise.
That’s why Prince Harry’s book Spare, released this week, seems so appropriately titled. Accusations roll thunderously like bowling balls. Family confidences topple like bowling pins.
The book is much noise about things of little concern to most people, and no value in solving real problems. It’s a misery memoir written to rack up attention and make a heap of money.
Another flaky excerpt tells of almost freezing his penis on a trip to the North Pole. And, of meeting with a clairvoyant who said she could feel the spirit of his mother, Princess Diana.
He recounts smoking marijuana as a student at Eton College.
Excerpts from the book have me wondering whether he’s still smoking it, and maybe inhaling too much, too deeply.
Back in 2016 he consumed magic mushrooms to “redefine” reality and help him see “the truth.” But during one session he went to a washroom where he encountered a talking toilet.
He also writes that he used cocaine as a teenager, but says he did not like it and any suggestions that he was a drug addict are false.
So perhaps it wasn’t drugs that have made him a bit wacky. Maybe he was just born, like many British royals, a bit dim.
The most dimwitted writing in the book is about his six missions as a British army helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He writes that he killed 25 Taliban insurgents, saying: “These were chess pieces removed from the board.”
That has stunned and upset military people. Major General Chip Chapman, a senior British military official, called Harry “naively stupid” for breaking military standards and values - stupidity that could threaten the security of the United Kingdom and Harry personally.
Much of the book is about the Royal Family’s treatment of Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle. He has said his older brother William, the heir to the throne, called Meghan difficult, rude and abrasive.
He also says that an argument about Meghan resulted in a scuffle during which William knocked him to the floor.
He writes that his father, King Charles, was antagonistic towards Meghan and feared being overshadowed by someone charismatic and popular with the people. Charles said he would not support Meghan financially because the royal family was “not made of money.”
Harry accuses his father, his stepmother Camilla, now the Queen Consort, and his brother and sister-in-law of feeding the press negative stories about he and Meghan.
Harry and Meghan ceased Royal Family duties three years ago and moved to the United States.
Since then Harry has spent much of his time airing grievances against the Royal Family. These have hit a crescendo in the last couple weeks in an organized leadup to the release of Spare.
Harry has given a basketful of interviews to handpicked media, has had a documentary on Netflix and Meghan has been doing podcasts. All of which is contradictory considering Harry’s hatred of the media, notably the British tabloids.
He blames the paparazzi for his mother’s death in a 1997 car crash. The paparazzi were following a car carrying her and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed through a traffic tunnel in Paris. Their chauffeur was speeding, drunk and on prescription drugs when he lost control and crashed. Diana was not wearing a seatbelt.
Harry’s publicity campaign is paying off substantially, in financial terms. Sales of Spare are expected to be in the millions.
It hasn’t helped his image, however. Polling shows 64 per cent of Brits now have a negative view of the prince. Only 26 per cent see him in a positive light.
Meanwhile, as he counts his book royalties, Harry might want to consider one of life’s most important rules: Whining about how others treat you never makes life any better. Suck it up and move on with building a better life for yourself and anyone you can help.
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