The Royals with Roya and Kate - Harry in New York and Kate at the ballet

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Roya and Kate discuss Harry’s trip to New York while Meghan has also been in the headlines. Meanwhile the Princess of Wales has been gently adding to her activities with her recent visit to Sadler's Wells, the weekend trip to Balmoral and the upcoming Christmas carol service. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like when our estrogen levels drop during menopause, causing the risk of heart disease to go up. Know your risks. Visit heartandstroke.ca. Welcome to The Royals with Roya and Kate from The Times and Sunday Times. Great, okay, we're going to make that happen, okay? Thank you very much. You're going to be great. You're going to be really good. Fantastic. Whatever you say.

Absolutely. Crack on. What was that? I think that was the podcast editor attempt at a man-to-man pep talk. Manly pep talk. I'm not sure I think that was the podcast that had an attempt at a man-to-man pep talk. Manly pep talk? I'm not sure we picked the right audience for that. How did that go down on the subject of manly pep talk? Indeed. We present our latest episode, hot on the heels of breaking news overnight, that Big Boris, Big Boris says, when has he been known as Big Boris? When has he ever not been Big Boris? Big dog. Boris Johnson is coming out with a new book and front page

of a few papers is being serialised in the Daily Mail and it's emerged that he gave, that he gave, not very successfully, a pep talk to Harry in January 2020 trying to persuade him not to leave the UK and not to depart these shores. Now let's set the scene. Boris Johnson was Prime Minister at the time, this before he stepped down last year. It's January 2020. Harry and Meghan have recently said they're off. They want to go and pursue financial freedom, some independence, and they have set out their store and said we want to do, if we can, a half in half out, move to America, be commercial, but also do some role duties. Early in January, Harry is here for the Sandringham summit. So him, Prince William, the then Prince of Wales, now the King, Her Late Majesty,

will their private secretaries gather around a table at Sandringham and try and thrash out a deal. Harry's half in, half out template. No, that's in the bin. It's in the bin. The Queen and the rest of the family say it's a negative ghost rider. So it looks like he's off.

At the time, Megan is in Canada. They've been in Canada for a couple of months with young Sang Archie. And Harry has come back for the summit. She was going to be zooming in, wasn't she, on the on the telephone or on kind of video link? In the end, that was vetoed. That was vetoed. But that's the background to it. That's the background. So that negotiation has not gone Harry's way. And so we're at the UK Africa summit, trade summit, and Harry's there. It's one of his last royal engagements

as an official royal. But what is fascinating here Is this last ditch attempt by what Boris says was both Downing Street and Buckingham Palace asking him to do it. So I find that bit really fascinating because even though conversations have failed to reach what Harry wanted and they've put their foot down the wrong family, they are still thinking that Boris wasn't known to have a particularly close relationship with Prince Harry, could persuade him to stay. With the gift of the gab. But I know what I think is really surprising

about this one is that it quotes a friend of Boris saying, it was a man-to-man conversation. They were totally alone, but Harry wasn't returning. He was unpersuadable by that point. Boris succeeded in delivering Brexit, but even he couldn't stop Mexico. And the most surprising thing that Boris has a friend left to deliver such a quote. I liked the quote from the friend that said it was totally hopeless. I mean less of a friend. I just I think the

strategy here is interesting in that if I had first time that a politician's been deployed in such a way you know we saw John Major who's been who helped in the aftermath that he was Diana he was known to have had a much stronger bond with the Queen and members of the Royal Family years of they trusted him he was seen as sort of a wonderful diplomat in terms of managing human relationships. Sending Boris crashing in to try and do a last minute clean up job with Harry, to try and,

I don't know, it strikes me as desperation. If, you know, recollections may vary on this. At the time, there were reports that they had had what were described by officials as behind closed doors. There was a meeting. There was a meeting. We was a meeting. Yeah. We've got a picture of them at the summit just before they went into the kind of the room where there was no reporters, there were no cameras in there.

So something happened, something was said. Well it was so successful that Harry left the next day. Harry left. The very next day. And done Boris. And it's all gone not brilliantly well after that. Well it's been mixed hasn't it? But we have been seeing actually this very week the fruits of Harry's labours since leaving the Royal Family. He's been in New York during the UN, you know, Unger Week. He's been doing lots of very high profile, what should have been very high profile engagements. We talked a little bit last week, we were looking forward to him doing the plenary session with young changemakers at the Diana Awards, which he did. On Monday, we also saw him at the Clinton Foundation talking about mental

health and the parent network, which he set up. His parents network, exactly. And he was getting out his phone and talking about it. I thought that was really powerful because we had a week where we had it's all about politicians versus royal family again you know we had a week where we had Labour conference in Liverpool and some quite sort of hackneyed speeches I think they're very stilted very wooden meanwhile you've got Harry on stage in New York and I thought at hands down he did a really brilliant job he looked relaxed he looked quite nervous that first day yeah the second day he kind of got into his groove at the Clinton event and he got out his microphone in one hand, he

had his mobile phone in another and he said, who's on your lock screen? It's my kids. You know, what's yours? What's your lock screen? And then behind him were all those images of all the children who died as a result of either being bullied online or, you know, self harm through access to social media content that their parents had no idea what was going on in some instances and he was sort of railing against those big companies saying, you know, we need to take action for the sake of our children and it was so powerful, so brilliantly worded speech and really well delivered and I thought, yes, Harry,

that's what you should be doing, that's exactly what you should be doing. It reminds me a little bit. And I'm not sure how much Prince Harry will enjoy this comparison, but it does remind me of a few years ago when Prince William was taking on big tech and the social media giants like Facebook and Instagram with his cyber bullying task force. And he got. Yeah. He made that comment in here after Molly Russell died. Yeah. The 14 year old from London.

She died as a result of self harm and harmful online content. And William gave a very powerful statement at the Times, you know, reaching out to Ian Russell, her father, and saying, this should not be happening. How do we stop this? Well Big Tech kind of ignored William. The problem was he did a lot of convening and they all came to Kensington Palace and they would come and have tea with him. But when the task force did all its work and its research and presented some potential guidelines that could be introduced across Big Tech, they all just said no thanks. And he gave us sort of, he went to the Google headquarters in London, I remember going and sort of blasted them all

because he was cross and angry. I think that was one of the, I guess one of the first times that William felt that his position had not had the impact that he had wanted it to. I think that was one of the, I guess one of the first times that William felt that his position had not had the impact that he had wanted it to. But it did remind me of frustration. Yeah, I mean the two brothers do share this. They're on the same page with this. They are on the same page. But you know, Harry was out in New York doing his thing, Megan wasn't there and you know, he's been involved in a few events. But that is not, unfortunately for Harry this week, what has been involved in a few events. But that is not, unfortunately for Harry this week, what has been taking up the headlines here. Not all of the headlines, no.

Not all of the headlines. So there's been a lot of debate, hasn't there, about this report that came out in The Hollywood Reporter basically saying that Meghan was a bad boss, you know, 5 a.m. emails, that she was a bit of a kind of devil wears Prada kind of boss. There was one quote saying that she was a demon in high heels. Yeah a Duchess difficult. Duchess difficult. The narrative being from this Hollywood Reporter piece which was they claimed very well sourced.

They said they'd spoken to 12 people including one employee still there very high up working for Harry and Meghan and it you know. Which I shall be very surprised if someone was still in with an NDA on the phone to Hollywood Reporter but that's what they're saying. Well what's interesting well they then gave an interview to Access Hollywood didn't they standing by. What it has prompted is two weeks now of claim and counterclaim because this week after that we report, we've had a, I think, extraordinary riposte piece appear in Us Weekly where named employees, current employees, former employees of Harry and Meghan's

have gone on the record to rebut these claims. We've had Josh Kettler, the former chief of staff, Harry's chief of staff who left after three months saying his time with them was warm and interesting. We have Ashley Hanson, their global press secretary who works with both of them saying, giving extraordinary examples, very personal examples saying she went and had surgery and Megan was in touch with her husband daily to see what she needed. Though I'm not sure I would want daily phone calls from the boss if I was recovering from

surgery. Another member of staff saying they just mentioned to Megan in passing that they got a new dog and the next day a luxury dog lead arrived on their doorstep. Another employee saying, you know, I mentioned to Megan that my skin was bothering me and she put together a skincare gift. So that... Yeah, an element saying, well, there's no 5am emails like that. She doesn't work. In fact, on the bottom of her email, well, on the bottom of her email signature, it says, my working hours may not be your working hours. So this idea that, you know, I get it, you know, we can have flexible lives. We can, you know, I might not be getting back to you in the time that that you think is available. What's interesting about that strategy is it just, you know, I see that they wanted they wanted they wanted a sort of strong repost but it has just

kept the story running because we then it also shows you where the pinch points are what they're really upset about and what what they're worried about and they thought I can't let this slide you know they had a lot of negative publicity over the years some of the stuff they sort of brushed off but this this obviously really hits at something that they that they really feel they've got to put a line in the sand and say, no, no, this isn't right. I think that's because, you know, you and I both remember my former colleague, Valentine Lowe's huge scoop that there were allegations of bullying at the Palace of Staff, which Megan has always strenuously denied. And we must clarify that. Well, the Times reported, yeah, the Times published details of an email from Jason Nelph

basically saying that Megan had been bullying staff and that it had been unacceptable behavior and that there were two people who had left as a result of those actions. And Buckingham Palace did then commission a law firm to do a investigation and report into working practices. And we never saw- Which has never seen the light of day and

I never will. The only thing we saw which was mentioned in the sovereign grant report the following year was that some there was something in the HR kind of terms that had been changed that reflected possible sort of change in working practices. But my point being I think Harry Megan's camp would always have wanted to kind of go, and the lawyers said at the time, that was a smear campaign by the Times. UK Press smear campaign came out

just before their April interview. And I think they always felt they wanted to keep that firmly in the UK press. But this, the Hollywood Reporter, which is widely respected in the industry in which Harry and Meghan are now working in out there, you know, that I think is more problematic for them. And I think because of where it was they felt they needed to. And that's why we say have that comeback.

But then we've had another piece of The Daily Beast since come out with with with more claims. So I just question whether or not, you know, that the counterclaim and riposte is actually doing them any favors or just keeping the story rumbling. I think it would have hurt them at a time when Harry has genuinely had a good week and we're going to see him in London at the Well Child Awards on Monday. It's a time when he you know this is his thing and the idea that this is coming up again which essentially they will see as a kind of an old story that they had hoped to have put to bed. All the allegations coming back that painting Meghan as this sort of demon.

And also she's building, busy building her secret project. She's busy building her lifestyle brand, her American Riviera Orchard. There's going to be a big TV show next year with Netflix. So they won't be wanting that to infringe on her brand as this sort of wholesome, you know, mother and creative person who's living this amazing life in Montecito because that doesn't tally with what, you know, what's coming from Hollywood Reporter. So I'm sure that's at play as well. They're thinking hang on a minute, we need to put a stop to this. Well, the front pages of the American tabloids this week and here have not been about Harry

in New York talking about mental health they have been about this and I think I wonder how much that will bother Harry. It's a shame I think he says stuff like yeah you know instead of mental health we should be talking about mental fitness which I like that idea because it's you know rather than just taking it as wait till something bad happens you know a sort of mental illness as such we talk about keeping mentally fit so that you don't get mentally ill yes but yes I think that's that's really rattled some cages hasn't it in Montecito but moving on moving on moving

on to the other camp the Prince and Princess of Wales the Prince and Princess of Wales yes it's been a an interesting week. So we've had William has unveiled, well this was actually interesting, this was also in New York, the finalists of this year's Earthshot Prize. Yeah, Harry was in New York, William was virtually there with his video. And this is of course the Earthshot Prize which William launched a few years ago. It's a ten year project. Four years in. We're four years in. This year's awards are going to be held in Cape Town in November and there's some really interesting, there are five categories. There are, there's build a waste free world, protect and restore

nature, clean our air, revive our oceans and fix our climate. Yeah. And it does, it does produce some really innovative, sometimes quite quirky projects. So we've got three in each category and they're all so mixed. So you've got people who are trying to protect antelope in Kazakhstan in the wilderness there, you've got people who are growing homegrown, homemade algae in Scotland. That's going to be a new source of omega-3 which would then reduce the need to go fishing for salmon and fish to produce that Omega 3, which is the only other place we get it from.

Is algae going to become as big as obsession for William with seaweed? I hope so. There's some seaweed on the mix. How could there not be? There are people who are maintaining these sustainable seaweed farms that's going to rid the oceans of CO2. What was the other standard? I mean they're all so unique and I love this project because it's kind of building up this idea of let's just get these kind of sometimes wacky ideas, sometimes kitchen table ideas where some genius has just come up with

this new form of tech or it's maybe a company that's starting out a for-profit company but it just needs a little bit more help to kind of link it to big business and get it off the ground in that way. One of the one I think I think really good things about EarthShort is that although in each category only one of the finalists wins in each category and gets a million pounds to scale that up, all the people who are shortlisted get to go to these events and these sort of summits where they are mingling and putting put in touch with investors and so even if you don't win the prize in your category you are still you know you are in

still a winner you're still you're you're you you you're introduced to a bigger network where you have much bigger opportunity to make that idea happen exactly so I see more of that next week, aren't we? Yes. As we roll some of those things out. And then that's what the summit's about as well, isn't it? It's like getting people together so they can introduce you in a kind of launch pad, in a kind of blind date setting, so you can get the kind of innovators, the tech people, and then bring in the people who've got big money who can scale that project up. It's all about impact, isn't it, for

the prints? Well there's that, you you know one of the finalists from a couple of years ago, Knoppler, is now making all that extraordinary packaging which is now being rolled out across you know football clubs. It's junk food packaging but it's disposable but it goes back to the... It's not all junk food served at football grounds. Oh we'll get in trouble there. But it's getting rid of all the plastic containers and replacing it with... Is it made from seaweed? Are they having their kind of tofu poke bowls at football these days? Maybe I'm not in touch. I thought it was still burgers. Pine mash isn't necessarily junk food. No. Oh discuss, that's a whole other episode. So this is interesting. When Harry opened his parent network speech at the Clinton event

that we were talking about, he started talking about putting a man on the moon, astronauts on the moon, Russians and the Americans landing, you know, taking the space race. And then he branched off into kind of social media and things like that, which I thought was slightly sort of slightly tangential. And then you had obviously William's Earth shot, which is based on J.F. Kennedy's moonshot, which was the early 60s. President Kennedy said, right, we need to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. They did. Apollo 11 in 1969 did achieve that goal and Williams trying to do the same thing by saving the earth within a

decade or certainly making kind of big gains. I thought that was interesting how he chose to kind of draw on the space race and astronauts maybe I'm reading too much into it. Was he doing a bit of brotherly borrowing there? Maybe I'm reading too much into it. A bit of brotherly borrowing. A little secret you know. Treading into your territory. A little secret you know. Wave to his brother. secret, you know, wave, wave to his brother. Oh, you thought it was a big up to his brother? Yeah, maybe, I don't know. Interesting.

Again, I've just had too much time on my hands this week. I don't think about it. I don't believe that. So that's William. That's William. William's been up to you. Yep. And Catherine.

Indeed. We had our second in two weeks running, court circular entry that she had. Spoiling us. Yep, she had another meeting at Windsor Castle this week with some of her Royal Foundation team, some of her private office team for planning her carol service,

which is one of the set pieces that she plans to host. It's great. As part of her light program of duties and her sort of slow return to public work. But that will be. ITV. Broadcast on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve.

It's always a treat. We get to go. Which is lovely. And it's just a nice sort of signal that she's still feeling well and you know, planning that and looking forward to that. And it's something we always see the children there, don't we?

And the wider Middleton clan. We're seeing more of this kind of come out, the action plan for the Princess of Wales kind of play out now, aren't we? These little kind of nuggets. Okay, she started to do this, she started to do that. We'll talk about the ballet later. Come onto that.

Which was very exciting last night. I think it was interesting as well, they went up to Balmoral without the children, had a weekend with the King and Queen. You do wonder what was discussed there. That felt like a kind of step forward as well going to church with the King and Queen shortly after the second anniversary of the Queen's funeral. It was just a few days after. It would have been two years since that. They've been up there twice now in the last few weeks haven't they? They have yeah. So I think

that's it's all part of this kind of, you know, the wheels turn slowly at the Palace at the best of times, but I think obviously with her recovery, that's just taken to another level. But we are seeing the kind of action plan play out publicly, I think. Nice family time. Indeed.

That's a bit of a nice one. Restorative Highland cheer. Yes. For the Waleses. Indeed. restorative Highland cheer. Well let's have a nice cup of tea maybe we'll get another pep talk. Maybe we'll get another pep talk over a family. Let's hope not. I'd rather have a Kit Kat. Kit Kat rather than over a pep talk. Okay. Okay.

Also this week, there's been a story, not about what the Royals are doing, but who pays for it. Why are we talking about this now? Because I'm- Why are we talking about this now? Didn't we have the Sovereign Grant Report in June? We did. But there's been something else, hasn't there?

There's been something else. So this has come from Republic, which is the, obviously, people with an axe to grind. Well the name it's in the name. Nothing gets past you right? No. The anti-monarchist they bang the drum for getting rid of a whole bunch of the royal family what a waste of cash blah de blah. They've produced a report of sorts. What does it say? They claim the royal family does not cost the public 86 million as per the sovereign grant but actually the true figure they say is more likely to be half a billion pounds a year and they've dotted it up to be

five hundred and ten million pounds. Wow, fanfare! Gosh, a lot of money. So in that, so they're taking the 86 million from sovereign grant that the royal family get for their duties, public duties. They're adding in the cost to local councils when they go on royal engagements. They're adding in the cost of security. They don't know the cost of security. They're saying it's about 150 million they reckon. Who knows? We've never been told. But that's part of the problem. They're saying that there isn't this transparency. So they've had to kind of guesstimate a lot of the numbers to come up this half a billion pound figure. Right. And they're saying there should be more transparency. In 2011, David Cameron and his

Chancellor George Osborne reformed the method by which the taxpayer funds the monarchy. And out went the civil list and in came the sovereign grant which was calculated on a proportion of the profits from the Crown estate. As the Crown estate has got more profitable, so that percentage has come down to the royal family but still, you know, they look at getting a £45 million winfall over the next couple of years. That's going to go to help fund the restoration or reservicing work of Buckingham Palace. Just £370 million. Yes, which has been paid for over this sort of decade. Yeah. But it's an interesting debate, it's one that always comes up.

Critics refer to this one-way formula as a kind of gold ratchet, you know, that they get this sort of slice of the Crown estate. Because the funding is never going to go down. Is that the argument from a public? Yeah, well that's it. I mean, what was interesting in this report was that they said that, you know, there should be a scrapped and there should be a kind of just a one-off fee every year for the royal family. And interestingly, they said... And they said the King Charles should be paid £189,000 a year or something, the salary. Which is more than the Prime Minister. I'm not sure why the anti-Monarchist group thinks that the King should be paid more than the Prime Minister. Anyway. How do you think that would go down with the King? It was all quite bad. They told him he had a

salary of £189,000 and that was that was it for the year, Your Majesty. That's your lot. That's your lot. I don't know, it wouldn't go very far, It wouldn't fund the two new helicopters that they've got coming this year. But no, it's an interesting point in terms of transparency, what the public is allowed to know, what the public isn't allowed to know. Some will argue that even if it was half a billion, that it's very good value for money. And Republicans are playing the benefit that the country gets.

From things like tourism. Exactly, they said it's all been overblown, you know, what do we really get from them anyway? What have the Romans ever done for us sort of approach to their report? Well. There was something there? Something there from the Republic.

Something to discuss. Always. But should we end on a nice thing? I think let's. Go on Roya, tell us what's been nice. Well, late last night, we got a message from Kensington Palace on our WhatsApp group to say, heads up,

just to let you know, the Princess of Wales this afternoon, as in Thursday afternoon, went to a matinee performance of at Graham Kahn's production with the English National Ballet at Sadler's Wells of Giselle and she went privately so it wasn't a public engagement and she enjoyed it so much that she's

gonna post about it and then sure enough dropped onto their social media post was a personal message from Catherine which read as follows. Congratulations and thank you to English National Ballet and Sadler's Wells for the wonderfully powerful moving and inspiring performance of Akram Khan's Giselle. Creativity at its best and it's signed with C. And what we've been told about this is that it's not a public engagement, it doesn't signal her return to public engagements, but as part of her recovery, things that bring her joy have been very important. So she's talked about the outdoors in nature and we know Catherine is very into the arts and ballet and theatre and visual arts and obviously an afternoon at the ballet a very innovative performance and that Clam Khan is an extraordinary choreographer I've seen

quite a lot of his work. It was a tonic for a soul. Yeah I think she was buzzing after that wasn't she and that's why she wanted to do that personal message. I looked online. I actually went to see them rehearse because I was the queen went to see these rehearsing. It's really it's so so moving and the two principal dancers are incredible, they have this amazing chemistry, partly because they're married, so James Streeter and Irina Takahashi,

and when they dance, it's absolutely spell-binding. And that's just in rehearsal. So what was it like on the... Do you think maybe the Queen told you how wonderful it was? I did wonder that, at Balmoral, whether they were having that conversation at Balmoral and she said, you know, why don't you get down? Because the Queen's recently become a patron of the English

National Ballet this year and went to visit for the first time, saw that rehearsal and they were extraordinary and I'm rather jealous. Well I looked as soon as we got that, I looked online to see if there were any tickets left because it ends on the truth. Hello press office, the English national. Hello. Hello. Hello. Kirstam has got some tickets. Oh, I bet he's in the box. He's probably in a box. Dagnamit.

Okay. Anyway, it would be a nice outing for the Royals, wouldn't it? Yes. By which I mean us. The Royals. By which I mean us. It wasn't us.

Your royal highness. Anyway, see you at the ballet. See you at the ballet, love. Put your ballet slippers on and. Oh well, see you at the ballet. See you at the ballet love, put your ballet slippers on and... Slippers? Yeah, ballet slippers. They're called pumps. Yeah.

Okay, see you there. Tootoo. Bye bye. Tootoo much fun. Oh, that was the sun headline. Yeah. Nice to tootoo see you. Nice to tootoo.

Yeah, Kate, sort of works. Yeah. Right, nice to tootoo see you too, Roya. See you soon. Yeah. Right. Nice to see you too, Roya. See you soon. Bye.