‘Stop playing cat and mouse with the press!’: Harry & Meghan warned over holiday photo dump

0:02The Telegraph.

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0:49The summer holidays are officially underway, and while the rest of us are scrambling for hotel bookings and fighting for sunbeds, where do the royals spend their summers? Welcome to this royalty holiday secret special with me, Hannah Furness. And me, India McTaggart. And today we're joined by Russell Myers, the Mirror's Royal Editor and author of William and Catherine, The Intimate Inside Story.

1:18Russell, you're going to tell us about the Wales' holiday habits. But before we get into that, we have had a surprise, as ever, from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Megan Rearley, who has given us an insight into their holidays. Oh, yeah. What have they shown us? Well, they've shown us a sort of behind-the-scenes version of their summer holidays. I mean, it's something we don't expect from the royals these days. It's been times gone by when we've had a sneak peek of what the royals have been up to, whether that's at Balmoral or on skiing holidays. But this gives us a sort of sanitised version, I think, of the Sussexes' holidays.

1:50We've seen them in Portugal. They've shared behind-the-scenes images of their time at Ortho, quite controversially, whether they get people talking, whether they should have done that. I mean, it's interesting that they have to, well, I suppose it's interesting that they want to show this version of their life because they have claimed privacy for so long and yet putting their children at the forefront of their PR is quite an interesting move, I think. And we didn't know where they were over this summer. We knew that Harry came back to Britain. There was this big media storm narrative over whether he was going to bring Meghan and the children.

2:27They didn't officially in the end. They did come. And then at the end of the summer, they've shown us what they've been doing all along. This isn't the press following them around, is it? What's happening? So this is exactly the point. And I think this is where the narrative sort of took off because obviously there was this will they, won't they come? Where will they stay? Harry was talking about security and the issues surrounding that. And that's why he didn't want to bring his wife and children unless they were secure and had police protection. And then, of course, we get this sort of 12-slide insta-dump, as we call it.

2:55of where they were, essentially, and revealing kind of the places that they were staying. I mean, it's quite easy to see that restaurant in Portugal that she posted. They also posted from Tanera Moor. It's a privately owned Scottish island. And people like internet sleuths can figure this out quite easily if you reverse image search or if you just look and match the places. So I think it just didn't, you know, it was a little bit hypocritical for some people when they felt, well, why are you so concerned about security issues in London? But then you can sort of travel quite freely within Scotland, within Portugal and, you know, without being intruded by any members of the press or public seemingly.

3:34How does it feed into that privacy security argument? Because on the one hand, Harry's saying he's not safe to come to Britain. On the other hand, they've demonstrated themselves to the extent to which they can travel around Europe totally uninhibited. Does it help it? Does it hinder it? Well, I haven't been to the Costa Terra golf resort in Melides. I imagine it's very beautiful, the pictures I've seen from it. It has a link to Jack Brooksbank, who works for the firm as a development manager. But for me, it sort of seemed very strange that you would want to publicise that when you live there, part of the year, you've got a holiday home.

4:09I've been some golf resorts before. They're not crawling with security. I think to India's point, they'd spoken about security to the nth degree before they came here. It was the reason why Megha didn't come to London and then she eventually did come to the UK. I think that why on earth would you want to sort of publicise where you are at certain times if you're so concerned about security, especially somewhere like Portugal? If you're here in the UK, whether you're staying at royal residence or with friends, it seems a different issue. And I don't think that everything they've built up over the past few years necessarily rings true with the Sussexes.

4:50And when I first saw them, you know, I'm not a particular Sussex kicker for no reason. None of us are here. When I first saw them, I thought, lovely, lovely. Harry's been to the gym, chucking the kids around, having a lovely summer. Why shouldn't they share these photos? They're not members of the working royal family. They can do what they like. the difficulty is that you're selling this idea on the one hand that you're hounded and you need to be protected on the other hand that you're completely free and it's a sort of cat and mouse ta-da here's where we've been you didn't know we were here situation and it worries me very slightly that the images of the children and the quite specific locations of where they're going are being fed out by them, teased out, and it makes it into a little bit of a game, not necessarily for people who dislike them or want to harm them, but for their fans as well, of look what we're doing and you need to kind of look into it a bit to figure out where we are.

5:49Completely and that's why I say it doesn't ring true. It's in Congress with this sort of argument they're putting out that they are so terrified of people knowing where they are or their security not being good enough and I think that's why it kind of feels at times like they are perhaps like courting the press coverage of the Will They Won't They and that entire sort of drama and saga before they arrived in the UK. And of course, resulting in Meghan not even being able to take part in any sort of public engagements here, which were originally planned. So I think it just, people are sort of fed up of this sort of back and forth that they don't understand the kind of messaging that they're putting out because it contradicts itself so much.

6:24So I think that's, it's problematic. And do you think they really were where they were? Because lest we forget, this is the couple who you will remember this day as clearly as I do, when Meghan had had Archie, wanted the press to believe that she'd just gone into labour with Archie. They sort of like this idea of saying one thing that might lead people down one path and then doing another. Do you think maybe they were at a totally different location? One thing I would say is when they've got this house in Portugal and now they've publicised where they are, a lot of people did know that they bought this place a while ago anyway.

6:58Would we even publish pictures if they're with the children? I don't think a lot of UK publications probably wouldn't publish those pictures of the family together. You might get someone in the States like TMZ, publish them, and then there would be a conversation for the UK media of whether they follow suit. But I honestly don't think they would. So why publish that where you've been, you know, after the event? I think they obviously were in Portugal. We understand from their team that they were holidaying there and waiting there before Harry came over to the UK. But in the future, I mean, it's obviously going to cause problems now when they go there in the future.

7:37Just especially the kids' images. It feels like they want it both ways. You know, they want the privacy. They always talk about it. Yet they also sort of drip feed these images where you don't quite see the children, but they're sort of teased. And again, it's just, it doesn't, sorry, it doesn't land well because of the conflicting narrative. It just, they want to both. They're caught in this situation at the moment where they are in between two worlds. They are celebrities and yet they are royal. And so in order to keep feeding the beast, you know, they have to remain popular, they have to be seen, and they have to use what they have, which is pretty much an association with the Spencer family and the royal family, whether that was visiting Diana's grave or visiting the king, but also to be seen to be in these glamorous locations because, you know, that is the Hollywood lifestyle that they've been chasing.

8:29And we sort of assumed that they would visit Diana's grave, of course, because we knew they were at Ulthrock. That was sort of written about at the time. We didn't, we wouldn't necessarily have had any insight into this, except for the fact that there's a photo in this Instagram carousel of Harry and Archie. was it carrying these enormous bunches of flowers whether there's a double meaning here and they're doing something else we don't know but the the neat assumption of course is that that's where they're going yeah definitely i mean they were carrying these enormous bouquets of white flowers um lilybert i think it's in the picture too but she's not carrying flowers but of course you know it's very recognizable as part of the estate just not confirming that they were there but that picture being so obviously there i think it's again this cat and mouse thing that you're referring to that's just, I think, slightly irritating for the public because the public are not fools.

9:18You can't, you know, it's kind of why publicise that if you then don't want to sort of confirm it or talk about it in any way or confirm, yeah, anyway. I remember the original story was done in the British press and Harry and Meghan's spokesperson wouldn't say anything about it. And then they've just, as India said, they've confirmed where they are. Now, whether you agree with that or not, It's part of the narrative that they've they've weaved by coming to the UK, staying with the Spencer family. There were no pictures of Meghan or the children either arriving to parting or elsewhere. There was one image of Harry leaving for I think it was the Invictus engagement in a blacked out Range Rover.

10:00So they didn't need to do that. You know, they could have been part of sort of a carousel of pictures later on down the line. norm i i found it difficult to to manage with the the whole privacy background that they've discussed um and certainly there was no um you know reason for us to not suspect where they were going because they were they weren't carrying flowers that they'd picked from the gardens these were two huge okays that had obviously been delivered and we've got diana's anniversary coming up do we think we're now going to see more of this visit from them it's very possible i mean you kind of we talked about this yesterday you never know what's coming on on Megan's page whether it's you know she chooses to share moments of her intimate family life or her garden or for her business or um it seems likely that there might be you know she always does birthdays and she marks those kinds of occasions like anniversaries um she marks certainly does the anniversaries with Harry so wouldn't surprise me maybe they will show more with with Althor Perstate and maybe even with Earl Spencer who sort of appeared to be in one of the pictures in the background but we didn't quite you know And there's these rumours that they might be doing a documentary about Diana for Netflix.

11:10Have you heard anything about this? They haven't confirmed it. Those rumours have been around for quite a while. I mean, one thing would be for certain if Harry did pursue that avenue, that the Prince of Wales would be, I suppose, deeply hurt. And he would be angered by that. I don't think that would have been discussed by the brothers. I mean, they're not talking at the moment anyway. But for Harry to go and do that for money, let's be honest, it seems to be quite pointed if they did. But again, like you said, there's been no confirmation as you have. And the Diana element is so interesting in this to me.

11:47And please tell us about this from the Wales perspective, because these boys, as people still call them, even though they're in their 40s, brothers, William and Harry, they had very similar outbringings, even though Harry thinks it's heir and spare. their holidays as children were quite disturbing in some cases when you look back on them from a modern media landscape so they'll go away they'll have a few days of blissful time with their family with their parents earlier on and with their mother later where they were free they could play on the beach with their cousins and then the world's paparazzi would turn up the holiday would become frightening they were in they found their photos published everywhere diana on yachts we all know these images we've got that video which i found so haunting to look at now of um it's in the mid 90s of diana at a ski resort where she approaches the press and says as a parent i am asking you to leave us alone give them a moment's peace they've had the same upbringing they both have this instinct to protect their children of course prince william has got this iron cast clarity about how he wants to deal with the press doesn't he and how he deals with photographs of his children and their summer holidays.

12:56Harry emotionally at least has the same instinct to protect his children. In his mind, he's left Britain and he's left his family to protect his wife and children. How are they doing it so differently? William and Harry, I suppose, were equally scarred by those instances. And certainly there were very, very different rules around press regulation and different rules of engagement as well, because the royals did invite the press in at certain periods, whether that was taking pictures of Harry fly fishing with Charles in Balmoral or going to Closters skiing. The issue for William is about absolute protection.

13:35There is very, very different rules of engagement for his family. You know, we have the pictures of the children for their birthdays and maybe some videos we've seen over the last couple of years, the slow-mo videos, which they love to sort of wheel out every now and then. But again, they're very, very finely crafted, give you a glimpse of their private life. But in terms of them going away on holiday, it is an absolute three line whip that there will be no press on them. They're very, very private, whether they're up at Balmoral, they go to the Isles of Silly. These are mystique. These areas, these locations have very, very strict rules about outside paparazzi or photographs on the island.

14:13So I think by actively choosing where to go, you are sort of negating the issues that may arise of something that arose in his childhood. And they've sort of got the public on board with this, I sense. I feel like if we were to publish, which we never would anyway, pictures of the children on holiday, people would be outraged by it. Absolutely, they'd be furious. There's such an understanding, even I think, as you mentioned, between the public, the press and the royal family, that that's a line that's not ever crossed now. And I think that we talk about this in relation to Harry and Meghan's children and how worried they are.

14:49You know, they talked about not wanting them to be photographed going to school, for example. And it's like, well, that doesn't happen ever with the other royal children. It's very organized. It's now not this massive wall of photographers and, you know, the snapping. It's like one very organized rota with minimal presence. So I think it's very contained in a way that it wasn't previously, to your point, about their upbringing.

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16:53Where do they go on holiday? Oh, well, obviously about morals. They'll be up there in a few weeks' time visiting the king and queen. There'll be certain members of the royal family up there with them as well, I'm sure. Boy, Oslo Silly have proved really, really popular. Very tiny environment, very controlled in terms of the locals, which, again, is the same when they go to Amal Hall in Norfolk. You know, I know people whose children sail with them. And again, the locals are fiercely protective of them as a family. So if anyone was to turn up, you know, on a table having a coffee at the sailing club, they would be identified immediately.

17:29I mean, what William and Catherine have done particularly well, I think, is make sure the rules of engagement are very, very clear. I mean, they were absolutely blurred during the former Prince and Princess of Wales' day, where you would have Charles kind of willing, not being necessarily a willing participant, but he was engaging with the press in order to get them to come for those photo calls. and then of course Diana would engage with her private protection officers and then they would be in touch with the media, they would be allowed to sort of roll up on the boats for the next 10-15 minutes, get their snaps and clear off.

18:09But in terms of where the Waleses go, they've chosen very, very private, very sort of exclusive areas to holiday and again such as Mystique, you wouldn't have paparazzi photographers turning up on an island. That's a strict no-fly zone. India, if you didn't know, is one of my favourite people at The Telegraph because every single topic you could ever bring up, she's got something interesting and sometimes ridiculous to say about. So when we said we're going to talk about Mustique, India obviously reveals that she goes on holiday to Mustique. Please tell us about Mustique. It's really, really wonderful.

18:42I used to go there a lot with my family. So it's obviously literally just three miles long. It's tiny. It's 1.5 miles wide. But it's the slice of complete heaven. and actually you know after we talked about it I was looking into Princess Margaret's time there and how sort of hedonistic it all is and it's just filled with it's a lot of British and a lot of Americans and they all have these absolutely unbelievable villas there like that's how everyone operates there's one hotel cotton house but it's mainly sort of parties and lunches and dinners hosted on sort of Lagoon Beach or you know on a in a villa somewhere and it's like I can't It's honestly not even, it's like not a real place.

19:21Everyone's sort of barefoot. They're driving around in these mules or sort of mini moaks. Mules? Mules. Not the donkey? No, no. It's sort of a golf cart. It's like an off-terrain golf cart. But it's so casual. Everyone's very relaxed there. Everyone's been friends for years. There's sort of a crew that have been going there forever. And then there was like, I was a drop in and out sort of situation. But I made some really lifelong friends there because it's such a community hub and it's the same families that go again and again to the same villas. The villas are just absolutely breathtaking. They're all sort of themed differently.

19:55There might be like a Gresham villa or sort of a Japanese style villa. And they're very palatial and gorgeous. And there are images online of the ones that William and Catherine sometimes rent out because one of his friends, I think, is a property developer that has a villa there. And they're gorgeous. I mean, the sea views, the long infinity pools, the backdrop is just out of this world. And much like it was in Princess Margaret's time, people love to just party there, long lunches that turn into evening parties. They play dress up a lot. Everyone loves to dress up there. So Colin Tennant, who bought the island in 1958 and who actually then gave Margaret her home as a wedding present, he had this trunks full of dressing up clothes for people to just party it's it's it's really a hedonistic lifestyle there it's a lot of partying it's you can hike as well if you want to be sort of wholesome um but it's so much fun it's a beautiful place there's sort of generations of families who work in the restaurant so basil charles who runs basil i mean he's he was invited to william and katherine's wedding you know they've they've become firm friends with the people there so if you're if you're surrounded by people that you wholly trust it allows you to let your guard down like nowhere else on earth i imagine i mean there is one thing being in norfolk and being protected by the little community there but when you are away from prying eyes and i suppose you can party to your heart's content right because there's nobody there that you don't know and i think to your point as well because it's a place where sort of the you know the great and the good go um other than me but like mick jagger david bowie you know tommy hilviger all the names are quite famous or a lot of the names are quite famous so I think there is this discretion that's understood there um that no one would you know sort of you can confide in people like basil charles from basil's bar which did actually get destroyed in a hurricane and then rebuilt but that's sort of like the focal uh party point um people go I believe their night is sort of wednesdays um new year's eve by the way is the best time apparently to go that's the most sort of like social time to go that's when the social calendar is really really busy but um yes there is sort of a very core network there.

22:04And I imagine, much like actually we always talk about in William and Catherine's life, they've got this really sort of iron group where no one shares information and everyone's very loyal. I think that's sort of the same energy and mystique. And if you're used to seeing rock stars, the names that you just mentioned, you're not really going to bat an eye. Prince Libby playing cricket. Exactly, yeah. It's not really going to be the 40 photographers turning up at the school gates, which Meghan had argued. And I think that shows sort of a distinct lack of awareness about how the game has changed.

22:36I mean, it was a cat and mouse game back in the sort of 80s, 90s for those children. And certainly they were scarred by that and they don't want that for their own children. And they go with the Middletons, don't they? Or they have them, which I love. And they've holidayed with the Middletons for years. And they enjoy not only trips to Norfolk and Mystique with them. But again, that shows you very much how sort of united that family unit is. And William's learned a lot from the Middletons, a lot about family values and about all getting on and trying to have peace, I think, is very much what he's taken from them.

23:14And let us turn to Balmoral and my pet theory, which is that the British public like the royal family to suffer slightly. They don't like them to be on exotic holidays. They like them to be in Scotland where it might rain. They might get bitten by midges. It's absolutely beautiful. What did David Cameron say about Balmoral with the Queen? There's no chillaxing. There's no chillaxing. You're going to be out walking, fishing. You might shoot something. The Queen's doing the washing up, so you're going to have to ship in. Prince Philip, back in his day, would be interrogating you about whatever his interest of the day was.

23:45It's a much more royal holiday, isn't it? It is. Yes, and certainly the late queen set that on that path because she would work there, and certainly the king does that as well. They would receive the red boxes. It would be very much a working holiday. They might go and do a few engagements during the time that they were there. But when you have a place like Balmoral, Burkhold is actually much more secure, and they can very much disappear from view for a couple of weeks and not see anyone apart from the staff. But the queen liked it, So you could have all the family there, but you could still maintain sort of the facade of it.

24:21You're still working. And it was part of the court. So you'd host the Gillies Bulls. They would have people coming in and out all the time. The Prime Minister will go up. The new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, will go up at the end of the summer. How he will approach that, we don't know yet. Is the King keeping the late Queen's traditions entirely? Is it changing at all? I think he's got his own traditions because he is still staying at Berkhal. He doesn't stay at the big castle necessarily. He might entertain there and sit there, the prime minister there. But for him to stay at Burk Hall, it's somewhere that he knows.

24:55He has his own traditions. He still likes to go walking. He's still fishing. And so the castle is still run, essentially, as the late Queen had it. But Charles has brought his sort of own flavour of how he likes to relax, I think. And we're still going to have the royal drop-ins throughout the summer. Full house? Well, you'll have some. Not quite a film. Give us the guest list. Who's out? Well, I think pretty obviously Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Duke and Duchess of York, will be quite firmly out. And I don't expect we'll actually see Princess Eugenie or Beatrice there. They've kind of been keeping a low profile other than obviously attending the wedding of their cousin, Peter Phillips.

25:35And of course now Eugenie's just given birth to her third child. She's in Portugal, we know that, because that was where their daughter was born. but I imagine obviously William and Catherine with their family will drop in the Edinburgh's, the usual sort of working band of course which suits Charles really he's not one for fuss so he'd rather just have a couple of weeks where the family is sort of coming up in dribs and drabs the interesting thing of having the Yorks there in the past is they would be the most photographed Andrew would be at the golf course Fergie would be pictured out in the towns chatting to people and that really doesn't fit in with the whole mode of how Charles likes to run the business at the moment So we'll probably bump into some walkers we'll see some social media videos of an American tourist walking in the middle of nowhere They'll go to church every weekend so we'll see the car pictures Princess Anne is probably soon heading off on her yacht She will be sailing she likes to go to the Hebrides Mull where we have been of course It is a stunning part of the world.

26:43Tell us about that. Well, we were there a year and a bit ago to the Prince and Princess of Wales' 14th anniversary with the Royal Rotor to cover it. But when we got there, everybody wanted to talk about Princess Anne because they see her queuing at the local co-op. She stops off on her chores around the island. She wants to see all the lighthouses in Scotland. That's one of her life goals. So very ordinary. And they were quite taken with this idea that she would just get off the boat and go and buy supplies like anybody else would do. She's so no-nonsense. We love her. The public love her. Just carry a bag at the ready.

27:12Nobody else carrying it. Queen Camilla, solo getaway. Not that solo. She'll take her sister or some friends, won't she? But quite often when we're on tours with the king and queen, the queen will arrive late. Yes. Go home early. A little bit of alone time. Can you tell us about that? Well, she likes to go to a resort near Bangalore in India, which is part of a yoga, fitness, wellness retreat. Holistic health. Holistic out. Holistic out. You can see I'm not necessarily au fait. You always go there. But this is part of her downtime. She's not one for Royal Tours. We've spoken to her personally where she's, you know, she's pretty exhausted by the end of it.

27:55And I think that allows her to have that downtime that she needs. I mean, she's in her late 70s now. And what an opportunity to go to somewhere like that if you had it. Completely. It would be like, I imagine, I mean, I haven't been to one myself, but I imagine it's sort of a full body reset and it's spiritually recharging as well to be in that kind of a place with, as you say, that's very holistic and that kind of treats you from, maybe even there's some energy healing, who knows? That could be one of the things, a bit of Reiki. Whatever life's thrown at them. Chakras, yeah. Maybe we should send them all on a wellness retreat.

28:30And us. And us, yeah, covering it. We've probably got to cover it, but we'll just pretend. Maybe not the same one. Thank you so much for joining us. This is Russell's book. It is excellent, especially if you want to know a bit about Princess of Wales and how she is shaping the future of the monarchy and the current monarchy. I am off on my own holiday now. Camilla will be back from hers next week. And Tim and Michael Deacon will be with you for the weekend tea tomorrow.

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