In my previous column reviewing the many magnificent royal events and milestones the Empire witnessed in 2023 I avoided mention of those two terrible traitors – yes, I do believe it is a perfectly apt description – Their Non-Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Sussex now living in self-imposed exile in the USA.

While I hesitate to give column space to such treacherous individuals now residing in a former rebellious colony and seemingly hell-bent on bringing down the Monarchy that all Australians know and love, any look back at 2023 must necessarily include some reference to their antics.

Unfortunately, those in the popular press tend to feed off any hint of royal scandal and end up giving oxygen to the snide comments and cheap character attacks peddled by ungrateful upstarts like the Duchess of Sussex, the former gold-digging over-actor Meghan Markle, and her partner in crime the ungrateful weak-willed feline-flagellated green-eyed monster Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. (below)

More experienced hands such as myself, who has many times almost met senior royals from His Majesty King Charles II and his beloved Queen Consort Camilla down, know that the job of a Royal Correspondent requires a more considered approach.

So I was very disappointed that 2023 began with a wave of free media-generated publicity for the release of Prince Harry’s own “autobiography” titled Spare which promised to blow the roof off the House of Windsor.

It turned out to be a repeat of all the grievances the Duke of Sussex imagines have been visited upon him by his own family. Well spare me all the whining, is all that I can say.

Readers of The Bug will recall that at the time of the book’s January publication I reported exclusively that former US talk-show host Jerry Springer was enlisted to help the royal family sort out its disagreements in his trademark confrontational manner during a specially staged “intervention”. (main picture)

Yet that woke Hollywood-style idea – the Duchess of Sussex’s of course – didn’t help, and I am afraid the whole episode probably contributed to Mr Springer’s death in April.

Of course the Duke of Sussex couldn’t help but whinge about how he had been treated at the time of his father’s coronation in May – an event which the Duchess of Sussex chose to snub.

Prince Harry made the trip to the UK alone citing the lack of security being made available to him and his family as the reason for the Duchess of Sussex’s decision to stay at home in California with their children.

That’s despite the fact my Buckingham Palace sources informed me that royal household staff went out of their way to accommodate the Duchess and her needs if she had chosen to attend the historic event.

“It is difficult to know what more the Royal Family and senior royal staffers such as my good self could do for him,” a long-serving palace source confided to me at the time and going on to detail the fact that a special logistical program had been put into place, codenamed Operation Banshee, to attend to the couple’s needs.

It included sending to their Californian home a list of potential air fares and flights to the UK, details of available shorty-stay Air BNB flats in London, and prepaid Transport for London travel cards that would have allowed them to use all of the city’s bus, underground, rail, and tram lines during coronation week.

The year was bookended, quite literally, by the publication of that odious Omid Scobie’s Endgame that I shall say little about save the fact that, against my better judgement, I did buy a copy.

I shan’t divulge here my opinion of the book but anyone who visits me is free to flip through its remaining pages while sitting in the smallest room of my home and, like me, put it to sanitary use.

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