PRINCE Harry and Brooklyn Beckham were always going to get mentioned in the same breath when the younger man started having a strained relationship with his father.
Now that we know Harry and Meghan and were at the same dinner in Montecito, California, the link between the two prodigal sons feels almost official.
And yes, there are certainly similarities in their family feuds.
Brooklyn has been in the headlines because he skipped all of dad .
Harry’s own strained relations have been in the headlines because, well, where do we even begin?
With ? With the notorious interview in the chicken run with Oprah? With Harry’s bitter autobiography, ?
With his repeated accusations of racism among his royal relations?
With the allegation that there were “concerns”;; in the Royal Family about the colour of his unborn baby Archie’s skin?
Or with the most recent whine-festival interview on the BBC where Harry complained that his father “won’t speak to me”;; because of his interminable legal battles about royal security.
The blabber-mouth prince also blurted that he doesn’t know “how long my father has left”;; — an astoundingly offensive and disrespectful thing to say when aides insist battle against cancer continues in a “very positive direction”;;.
Here is the big difference between (he has adopted his wife’s family name as his own) and .
Brooklyn never talks in public about his family problems.
And Harry never stops.
Brooklyn, mate, keep it that way.
Harry’s self-pitying, great flapping cakehole is the reason he is now so profoundly unpopular with the British public (only Uncle Andy and Harry’s missus score lower).
But lest we forget, it is not just the fathers and sons of the rich and famous who fall out.
Rifts happen in the most loving of families. Sometimes that rift can be healed. Sometimes, sadly, tragically, a rift between a father and his son can last for a lifetime.
My dad was my hero but we fell out again and again.
My dad wanted me to go to university but I left school at 16.
Dad hated my wild years of sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Dad was disappointed when my first marriage fell apart because it meant his grandson would not grow up in the unbroken nuclear family that I had known.
My father and I never stopped loving each other always and we had reconciled by the time he died at 62.
And my heart goes out to ANY father and son who find that their once unbreakable bond is fraying.
Denigrate and disrespect
But what you don’t do is slag off your family to all and sundry.
What you don’t do is accuse, denigrate and disrespect your father in public.
If your family matters a damn to you, then you can’t do what Harry has done ever since he resigned from the .
Brooklyn should not see Prince Harry as any kind of role model.
Nobody outside the knows what has gone wrong with Brooklyn and his dad.
There is speculation about not wanting to wear a wedding dress designed by her mother-in-law — or being offended by a wedding speech. But it is all speculation.
We don’t know. Because Brooklyn doesn’t talk about it.
If he keeps it that way then there is every chance that the Beckham family problems will be healed.
But if Brooklyn thinks that Prince Harry is the answer to his problems, then he is asking the wrong question.
Because Harry has given a master class in how to create a family rift that lasts a lifetime.
And if Harry was my son, I would go to the grave without ever talking to him again.
THE French courts will work out what actually happened between Foreign Secretary .
But we can say one thing with certainty.
should not have left the back seat of their taxi looking like bin-collection day in Birmingham.
This world would be a nicer place if we all cleared up our own crap.
Like Barbie, we all love comfy shoes in end
EARLY in the Barbie movie, steps out of her high heels and her foot remains in exactly the same tippy-toe position, her heel still held sky high.
As if standing on tiptoe was Barbie’s natural state.
A new academic study says this is historically true with maker Mattel’s earlier dolls.
Since her debut in 1959, has been like every other style victim who places fashion above comfort.
For decades, Barbie and her high heels were inseparable.
But a team at Monash University in Melbourne has studied 2,750 Barbie models released over more than half a century and discovered that Barbie has recently started to sport more practical footwear.
In Barbie’s early years, the proportion of Barbies wearing high heels was 100 per cent.
In 2024, only 40 per cent of Barbies were still wearing stilettos.
Career-themed Barbies like pilot Barbie and doctor Barbie dress for the job – in flat footwear.
As someone who could frequently be seen falling off of his platform boots on Billericay High Street when Sweet and Alvin Stardust and the Glitter Band were riding high in the charts, I can only sympathise.
No matter how much of an empty-headed fashionista you were in your youth, sooner or later you long for sensible shoes.
TRUMP LOVES A LOVE-IN
HIGH praise indeed from for Syria’s President , the former al-Qaeda terrorist who ousted despised tyrant Bashar al-Assad last year.
“A young, attractive guy,”;; swooned Trump about Syria’s hot young warlord. “Tough guy! Strong past!”;;
Trump’s schmoozing in the Middle East did not stop there. He confessed he thought was a “tall, handsome”;; man and “very smart”;;.
Trump noticed similarities between the and .
“You sort of remind me a little bit of each other, if you want to know the truth,”;; the POTUS gushed.
“Both tall handsome guys that happen to be very smart.”;;
Who talks like this?
does.
We have all seen how susceptible the Orange King is to shameless, fawning flattery.
What is less frequently noted is that Trump himself has absolutely no shame about laying on the sycophantic bilge with a trowel.
Donald must have been disappointed when his dear friend the Russian President snubbed peace talks with Ukraine’s in .
But the American president would probably say one thing in Mad Vlad’s favour.
Have you ever clocked him on a horse with no shirt on?
Putin is bloody gorgeous.
HINT FOR FERGIE
THOSE of us who still deeply miss our will have been heartened to hear that insists Her Majesty is communicating with her – through the corgis.
“Every day they come in and go ‘woof woof’ and I’m sure it’s her talking to me,”;; says Fergie.
I think I know what the message means. Twenty-nine years after Sarah’s divorce from Prince Andrew, Fergie is still living in the Royal Lodge in Windsor with her ex.
So that barking from beyond the grave is probably the Queen saying: “You’re not still here, are you?”;;
AC/DC’S A SAFER SAT NAV
THE music streaming platform and insurance company Allianz have joined forces to encourage young drivers to listen to chilled-out tunes at the wheel.
Spotify will produce playlists that restrict the banging tunes to “safe”;; tracks with a range of only 60 to 80 beats per minute.
Because research has proven that fast music – above 120 beats per minute – makes you put your foot down.
My own research suggests that listening to AC/DC’s Highway To Hell definitely has a negative impact on my ability to calmly mirror, signal and manoeuvre.
Researchers at Fudan University, Shanghai, report that men take more risks behind the wheel when they hear a “sexy sounding”;; female voice on their GPS.
They must have some very funny navigation systems in .
Ooh, big boy, you have certainly arrived.
You are probably safer with AC/DC.
A NEW book – Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up,
And His Disastrous Choice To Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson – claims that in his last years in office, Joe Biden needed a wheelchair but his aides thought it would be a bad look with voters.
So Biden did not get the wheelchair he needed.
Which is ironic because used a wheelchair and FDR was the most consequential American president in history.
Whereas was always a total mediocrity.
NO COP SHOPS
WITH the prison population at 99 per cent capacity, we should be discussing the death of the British police station.
In London, the Met closed 124 stations between 2010 and 2022.
In England and Wales, 600 police stations shut in the same period.
The station has gone the way of Woolworths.
Where are the cops? Online!
And if they had kept all the police stations open, we would not need so many prison places.
