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Monday
The bond, the banter, the bravery, the bacon – all the b-words that render us British. Just as the era of the personal essay seemed finally to have been put to rest, a surprising new voice emerged this week in the form of Prince Harry, contributing some touching thoughts and a lot of alliteration to the public sphere to coincide with the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. Unlike his blockbuster memoir, Spare, the essay, which runs to 650 words, seems to be all the prince’s own work and, as well as his observations about the role of veterans, offers us a poignant insight into his life in California.
Or rather, into what appears to be one man’s homesickness for simple British pleasures not readily available in Montecito. Namely, wrote the prince, “stoic spirit”, “self-deprecation and humour”, the “banter of the mess, the clubhouse, the pub”, and a “cuppa or a pint”. And good luck finding an adequate cup of tea in that part of the world. But the misty-eyed list of Blitz-era national characteristics would seem to speak to a more generalised sense of estrangement that brings to mind a line from an EL Doctorow short story about a man “simply dying of the wrong life”.
While the royal family pressed on with its grim and overdue task of banishing the former prince Andrew, Harry’s random intrusions into public life look, by contrast, increasingly blameless. One assumes the prince would rather be at the Cenotaph this Sunday, alongside other members of his family – just as one assumes he’d be happier running after pheasants in a field in Gloucestershire than going to an LA Dodgers game – but instead he will be in Toronto engaging with veterans. A few years ago, at this time of year, Prince Harry laid a wreath in a private ceremony at the LA National Cemetery. There is nothing wrong with either of these gestures, but I’ll say it: they seem rather sad.
Tuesday
Finally this week, a satisfying conclusion to the many-year campaign undertaken by David Beckham and his PR team to have his contribution to national life recognised by royalty. Becks: my struggle (to get a knighthood) resulted in a feverishly wished-for trip to the palace on Tuesday to be knighted by the king, all insults apparently forgiven.
You may recall those insults, which were extremely memorable. In 2017 a leaked email from Beckham to his PR adviser contained a petulant rant in which the now Sir David referred to the honours committee as “unappreciative cunts”, and went on, “it’s a disgrace to be honest and if I was American I would of got something like this 10 years ago”.
At the time, Becks insisted the email was “hacked” and the words “doctored”. But glancing back at those sentences I would suggest that the two major indicators they were written by Beckham himself are the slightly strangulated and very Beckham-esque phrase “to be honest” and – at the risk of sounding like a member of the honours committee myself – the grammar of “I would of got something”. Anyway, congratulations to Sir David and Lady Beckham!
Wednesday
Ah, George Clooney, the actor who put his byline to a 2024 op-ed in the New York Times calling for Joe Biden to step down – thanks for your contribution, George! – and then went very quiet indeed when Donald Trump was elected, finally surfaced this week in an interview on CBS to clear his throat and offer a qualifying opinion.
I know movie stars can’t win when it comes to airing their political thoughts – annoying when they do, craven when they don’t – but there is something particularly toe-curling about Clooney’s sporadic engagement with politics, and this week’s remarks were no different. “I think it was a mistake, quite honestly,” said the actor in reference to Kamala Harris becoming the default Democratic candidate after Biden stood down. “I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary. Let’s battle-test this quickly and get it up and going.”
I would say nobody asked, but sadly the CBS hack clearly did, and the difficulty for Clooney at times like these is a possible lingering confusion in his mind between who he is (George Clooney) and who he has been paid to imagine himself to be (Edward R Murrow) – a mistake that the 64-year-old’s chatshow auto-chuckle and beaming self-regard thankfully prevents his audience from repeating.
Thursday
The new Ryan Murphy show, All’s Fair, has been destroyed critically from all angles, but for my money, Apple TV’s Down Cemetery Road is the bigger disappointment. I expect nothing from Murphy, the former hack for Entertainment Weekly who hasn’t made a decent show since he produced The People v OJ Simpson 10 years ago.
But you expect something very elevated indeed from the combined talents of Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson and Mick Herron. Perhaps Herron’s book, on which the show is based, is OK. But the adaptation is hokey, convoluted, stuffed with nonsensical sets (a commuter-belt home in what is supposed to be an alternative community) and, with the exception of Wilson, the worst acting I’ve seen since Megan Stalter’s comic turn in Too Much. If you value your time, ditch Down Cemetery Road and watch HBO’s I Love LA, the best new thing on TV by a long chalk.
Friday
The biggest male movie stars in the world right now are probably Timothée Chalamet and Jacob Elordi, both beloved by gen Z and slightly baffling to those of us who grew up at the Pitt/Cruise end of the continuum. To which end, People magazine revealed its annual Sexiest Man Alive this week and it wasn’t a scowling beefcake, member of the church of Scientology, or gentleman with a complicated history with his ex-wives. Instead, it was Britain’s own Jonathan Bailey, 37-year-old star of Bridgerton and Wicked, and the first out gay man to win the People crown. Even if it’s a silly competition from a dying old media brand, I call that progress.
