….NOT!

A tweet and online plug from The New Daily have been selected as worthy early joint contenders for The Bug‘s uncoveted Media Glass House Mainstream Mediocre Beat-up of the Year award for 2023.

In a style of clickbaiting that would make The Daily Mail Australian edition proud, both news plugs from The New Daily clearly promised some very juicy retaliations from the troubled House of Windsor to Prince Harry’s attacks on them.

The tweet trumpeted: “The Royal Family has broken its silence as Prince Harry unloads a series of bombshells while promoting his memoir Spare.”

Ooooh, wah! we all thought excitedly when we read these opening tease paragraphs!

We repeat …

The Royal Family has broken its silence as Prince Harry unloads a series of bombshells while promoting his memoir Spare.

On the day that two interviews with the Duke of Sussex were aired in the USA and UK, King Charles and Camilla took to Twitter.

And how have King Charles 3 and the Queen Consort taken to Twitter – how have they BROKEN THEIR SILENCE! – to put the ginger nut back in his biscuit tin?

The New Daily then reveals all!

Posting a photo of Kate Middleton receiving flowers from a child, Charles and Camilla wrote: “Wishing the Princess of Wales a very Happy Brithday today!”

Princess Catherine’s 41st birthday has been overshadowed as Harry made a series of revelations, including describing Camilla as “dangerous”.

On her 40th birthday last year, the Palace released a striking portrait of Kate in a red Alexander McQueen gown.

This year she has not been left untouched as Prince Harry dishes the dirt on what goes on behind the scenes in royal life.

Yes, Buggers! That’s it! Chucky the Third and the Horse Lady really served it up to the ungrateful little sod. Right now, as a result of their brutal putdowns, Spare is probably selling for 50 pence in remainder boxes all over the UK and networks all over the world are withdrawing their interview offers!

The reality is that Chucky and Cruella de Step Mother may as well have been tweeting their intention to open a flower show in Kent, or that Charles as king has stopped talking to plants because they’re now below him and undeserving of his attention, or that Camilla has reach that stage in life when Charles’s services are no longer required as a menstrual plug.

Editor’s note: It’s great to be able to kick off the 2023 Beat-Up of the Year awards with this worthy nomination. Bug aficionados will remember the 2022 award was cancelled as there were far too many worthy nominations from the mainstream mediocre, from the May federal election and the November Victorian state election in particular, and singling out one would be most unfair.

Such was the quality and depth of those nominations that a front-runner from April last year that our judges more or less had put down their glasses over and declared the 2022 winner could not be separated from all those that followed.

That was The Australian Financial Review yarn from April that beat up mercilessly an Ipsos poll that ended up being the equivalent of a phone around of a handful of Michael Stutchbury’s and Phillip Coorey’s close family members.

The Bug never found out whether the Ipsos poll was of two focus groups, each involving five people, or five focus group with two people each. Either way, it was a doozy. Right Ned Ryerson?

And we at The Bug are still wondering why we didn’t give the AFR naming rights for the Beat-Up Trophy there and then!