Speaker 1Have people got Meghan completely wrong?
Speaker 2After shocking allegations emerge about the Duchess of Sussex's father, Thomas Markle Sr., are we now having to re-evaluate her relationships with her own family?
Speaker 1The perception within Britain has long been that Meghan is an agent of chaos who has injected dysfunction into the royal family. And it's her fault that she broke up the partnership of Harry and William, she upset Kate, and she stole away this fun-loving red-haired boy and took him to America, right? Sure. And what this story does is this really challenges that narrative. Camilla, we're all a little bit in shock trying to process two enormous stories which are related but separate, so we need to establish what they are. The first is that the son of Thomas Markle Sr., who is called Thomas Markle Jr., who has been his father's carer for some time, his father has been unwell, he's had a leg amputated, alleges that he discovered a stash of child pornography at his father's house, that it was mixed in with family mementos, which is just a horrific thing.
Speaker 2Awful. Just awful and shocking.
Speaker 1Thomas Markle Sr. has denied the allegation. Thomas Markle Jr. is standing by it. So that's one story.
Speaker 2And just on that, Tim, it's shocking that Thomas Markle Jr. has said this, as well as the discovery being shocking. And without going into too much detail, he's basically referred his father to the FBI. He's got a local IT expert in, and he's found things on computer, hard drives, thumbnails, and then he's saying about the stash that was found, it was, quote, old books that turned out to be full of naked little girls. These are allegations. They are denied. But just to stress, in the whole breakdown between Thomas Markle Sr. and his daughter Megan, and they haven't spoken for years, we had her half-siblings, Samantha Markle, and Thomas Markle Jr. massively briefing against her and being hugely supportive of their father. So for the son to turn around and do this and say this, it does merit some close consideration, because this isn't the usual suspect of saying that Thomas Markle Sr.'s character is flawed. I just want to plant that in the mind there.
Speaker 1Yeah. It is an allegation, and to repeat, Thomas Sr. denies it. But that's story one in the present day. Then we hear, that Megan says that in 2018, she was told by the Metropolitan Police that an allegation had been made against her father. She then cut off all relations with her father, she says, and this explains why she didn't introduce him to his grandchildren.
Speaker 2So I'm going to read the statement now, because I think it deserves to be read in full. Just to reiterate the timeline, I break the story of Harry and Megan being an item in 2016. Quite a lot happens between them and them getting engaged and then getting married in May 2018, including, of course, Prince Harry hitting out at the press for being too intrusive into Megan's life and warning that history was in danger of repeating itself. And that obviously involved journalists going both to Megan's mother for backgrounders and to her father. So just hold that thought there, because it's in 2018 that she discovers this news, although she's not specifically about the date. This is her statement from today. I am deeply distressed at the news that has come to light in the last 24 hours, and my thoughts are with any children who may have been harmed. In 2018, a letter was sent to the Metropolitan Police and Royalty and Specialist Protection. That letter was subsequently shared with me. It made troubling and disturbing allegations against my father, and I was given assurances that these were being investigated. I hope it can now be understood that, despite certain media publications' distortion over the years, any distance from my father and my choice to not allow him to have contact with our children was for one reason, to protect them. I trusted that the authorities were doing the same for other families. Although the breadth of what has now been uncovered is more sickening than one could ever imagine, my sincerest hope is that justice will be fully served and that the priority remains the safety and protection of innocent children. So as you say to him, we've got two unrelated but related situations here where she has received a letter with disturbing allegations, but we don't quite know what they are, around the period where Harry and Meghan were preparing to get married at Windsor Castle. Now, just from my memory of that period, something odd did happen because covering the Royals at the time, of course, there were a series of press conferences leading up to the big day so that journalists could be briefed on what was going to be happening. And I distinctly remember going to a press conference at the Royal Court of Justice, at the Royal Court of Justice, at the Royal Court of Justice, just down the road from Telegraph HQ in Victoria, round the back of Buckingham Palace, to be told that Meghan absolutely would be being walked down the aisle by her father. And it was explained to us that although her parents had divorced when she was a child, that daughter and father had a very close relationship. He had been a lighting director out in Hollywood and for a period of her teenage years, she had lived with dad and not with mum. And that was made very clear to us and so that's what we were preparing for in court. It was a copy. Suddenly something changed and nobody could ever really work out why it had changed. But it suddenly became apparent that the couple had fallen out with her father and that he wouldn't be walking her down the aisle. Subsequently, he announces he can't even come to the wedding because he's had a heart attack. He ends up in hospital. The whole thing's a mess. There's a huge amount of discussion in newspapers about why Harry and Meghan haven't flown out there or why, in fact, Harry didn't maybe send a representative from the Royal Family to the Royal Court of Justice. I mean, to try and smooth things over. In the background, there was also an allegation that Thomas Markle Senior was briefing the press and there was a famous image that appeared on the front of the Mail on Sunday of him being measured up for his wedding suit. And because it looked as if he had colluded with a paparazzo, the couple were very angry because, of course, Prince Harry has made it his mission to crack down on press intrusion. So it looked as if Thomas Markle Senior was kind of feeding the monster that had come to attack Harry and Meghan. So the whole thing was a mess. But I must admit, this is so shocking because the Royal Press Pack, as far as I'm aware, and me personally, have never been given so much of an inkling of this being in the background.
Speaker 1But why would you? If all she knows is that an allegation was passed on to the police, if no charges were brought, if there was no prosecution, then she really has nothing to brief people about.
Speaker 2Although, just to come in there, yes, you're right. But let's be honest, this is a couple who haven't been shy about briefing against their nearest and dearest. I mean, the whole of that side of the family, as far as Meghan's concerned, and by the way, I never went along with this. I didn't ever go and interview Samantha Markle, her half-sister, or Thomas Markle Junior, her half-brother. I personally, and I said this, and I wrote it, found it very distasteful that you would have half-siblings. I think, as a journalist, you know, when family members start publicly piling in, alarm bells go off and you think to yourself, hang on, there's something else going on in the background here. They weren't necessarily reliable witnesses and they hadn't seen Meghan for years and years. But we shouldn't forget that both of those half-siblings regularly appeared on the airwaves to slag her off. Now, clearly, now they've diverged in opinions because Samantha Markle is saying that she doesn't believe Thomas Markle Junior and she's told the Daily Mail, there is no merit in these disgusting allegations whatsoever and my brother is disgusting for making them up. He wants to destroy our dad. Shame on him.
Speaker 1I think I'd offer a couple of observations. One is, this is why you want to keep family away from things as much as possible. Why you want to avoid comment on family conflict. Because you don't know all of the truth. But also, it's so painful and traumatic. It's none of your business. Yes. It's best in public life to focus on the individual who's actually in the family. It's best in the public eye. And one thing that did always trouble me about how some in the media covered Megan was their willingness to talk to the family. If you go into any family, you'll find people who will say, I don't like her. I don't like him. And it's for very personal reasons, some of which can be bound up with childhood traumas. And maybe we're going to see some of that when all this stuff comes out.
Speaker 2I know, but then Tim, the counter-narrative to that would be, they have said, they have spoken about their own family in very disparaging terms. Harry and Megan have talked about the royal family. I mean, they have levelled an accusation that's only slightly less bad than this, which is that the royal family were inherently either racist initially or unconsciously biased. So they levelled allegations against the royals. This, of course, is a lot worse. But I'm saying.
Speaker 1I think someone asking what will the child look like is embarrassing and, as the kids say, cringe. But the thing about the allegations, of looking at child sexual images again Thomas Markle Sr., is it's an allegation that blows everything out of the water. Yes, of course. It just completely changes the way you perceive the dynamic of the family.
Speaker 2No, but my question, Tim, is, sorry, just to explain myself, my question that I can't quite fathom right now is, if they've had the opportunity to go on Oprah Winfrey and talk about their relationship with the royals and done a Netflix documentary, and he's written a book, Spare, why haven't they ever given a further explanation, and it may be because they are legally challenged in doing so, but why haven't they given an explanation as to why that relationship with Thomas Markle Sr. irretrievably broke down, rather than leaving press and public guessing? Because had her people or his people taken royal correspondence aside at that point where he backed out of the wedding, or they wanted him to back out of the wedding, and then subsequently, and had a quiet word saying, listen, this is not for reporting, but you need to be aware that there are some very, very serious allegations that have surfaced about Thomas Markle Sr., and this is all quite dark and cynical, and just be careful who you're dealing with here, then the reporters would have taken that on board, I would imagine.
Speaker 1Would they? I think the good ones would. I think the bad ones would still have intervened. If they were here, what they would probably say is, we are not required to share something traumatic with the world's media, and we shouldn't have to be. And one could say, yes, but the problem is, you've shaped our perception of you by the amount that you want to share, and that gives us the feeling that you're the kind of people who just tell us everything, but actually no one ever tells everything in public life. And they shouldn't be required to. And if this turns out to be something true, if it turns out to be something which has haunted the family for some time, maybe there are very good psychological reasons why they did not wish to share.
Speaker 2But are you saying that before the media knew about this, they were wrong to have interviewed Thomas Markle Sr.?
Speaker 1No, because that's a very good point. You cannot judge the media for not acting on the basis of something it did not know, because no one told them. And I get that. And you're. You're also absolutely right to say that it's not necessarily been the media chasing the family. The family has allegedly sought out the media.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's right. I mean, that is right. And I think they've done that for money. And it's not the first time that people do that. And it won't be the last time. What I meant earlier is the scale of the vitriol seemed completely disproportionate from Samantha and Thomas Markle Jr.
Speaker 1Was it public interest for the media to speak to the family? Was it public interest for the media to speak to the family and hear their reasons or their take on why they disliked Meghan?
Speaker 2But that's always been the dilemma with royal reporting. Is it in the public interest or is it merely interesting to the public? But I mean, it's quite difficult for TV producers and newspaper reporters alike to have people like Thomas Markle Sr., Thomas Markle Jr. and Samantha Markle knocking at the door and say, oh, no, actually, I wouldn't like to take your version of events on why Meghan is who she is. Clearly, this doesn't. This does put it into a different context. I just was always suspicious of them and didn't think they were reliable sources, put it that
Speaker 1way. And I think anyone looking at them could see they were a hot mess. I think that was just obvious. But this brings me to my second observation, which is the issue of who the British public has blamed for the split with the royal family. Because that's. That's at the heart of all of this, right? If there is a public interest, it's the fact that the family has to be divided in two over this. And the perception within Britain has long been that Meghan is an agent of chaos who has injected dysfunction into the royal family. And it's her fault that she broke up the partnership of Harry and William. She upset Kate and she stole away this fun-loving red-haired boy and took him to America, right? And what this story does is this really challenges that narrative and says, maybe the dysfunction is absolutely not Meghan's fault. Maybe it's something deeper and traumatic that we should have shown. Obviously, we didn't know.
Speaker 2We didn't know.
Speaker 1We didn't know. But maybe we were too quick to place the blame on one individual and not think about maybe the background that shaped her and maybe it's not her fault.
Speaker 2I know, but that's also to suggest that maybe it's not her fault. Most people singularly blame her and there are some, but I've always maintained that Prince Harry was always a round peg in a square hole. He was always in the shadow of William and Kate, even though he had arguably at the time much more star quality. He was always saying to the royal powers that be, why can't I do this? And why can't we change that? And they'd always be steady as she goes, which doesn't, it didn't sit right with his mother and it doesn't sit right with him because he's a maverick. What happened was Meghan came along and simply gave that rocket fuel, but it was there already. I've always said that. This whole Meghan's Lady Macbeth narrative is wrong. Prince Harry was being pretty bloody difficult before she came on the scene because he wanted to rewrite his own royal role and that was problematic because of fears of overshadowing William and Kate. And of course, it's all detailed in Spare, how he literally felt like the spare to the air, was made to feel like it, was given inferior accommodation, not allowed to have a beer, and all the rest of it. So yes, I agree with that. But actually, funny enough, the dysfunctionality of Meghan's family seemed to play quite well into the dysfunctionality of Harry's family. This was a divorced woman who was marrying the son of a divorced couple who had been broken by his mother's death. She's slightly older than him. She had more life experience. She seemed like she was a ready-made royal because she'd already done work with the UN and stuff. She knew her own mind. And don't forget. We also had Harry, this kind of slightly loose canon playboy prince. So people thought, goodness me, he needs to settle down. There was almost a touch of the kind of Prince Charles and Prince Andrews about him. We didn't want him to be on the shelf as the world's most eligible bachelor. And then a mature woman who knows her own mind, who has had a successful acting career and can articulate herself beautifully, comes along and sweeps him off his feet. But I see what you're saying. It's this idea that, oh, well, because she comes from this very difficult family, it's no wonder. No wonder she's broken up another one. Do you mean that kind of stuff?
Speaker 1Yes, exactly. And I wonder if there, again, are parallels with another story, the Jason Arday case. It's a very different, very tragic professor who ended up taking his own life. In that instance, I think the media was forced into asking questions about ethics and the way that it approached a story. And I wonder if this is going to have a similar impact. I think it's going to have a similar impact where a lot of royal correspondents, I'm not saying the good ones, but the ones at the lower end of the market, are going to be re-evaluating the way in which they handled Meghan.
Speaker 2Well, they might have to re-evaluate the way that they handled Thomas Markle Senior. But whatever Thomas Markle Senior has or hasn't done, it doesn't change the fact that Harry and Meghan still decided to Mexit in 2020, still decided to give an interview to Oprah Winfrey. Still decided to do a Netflix documentary, which featured a mock curtsy to the Queen and other high-profile moments. And he still decided to be highly critical of his own family in spare. I mean, these allegations add context to the breakdown of the father and daughter relationship. They don't change anything that the couple has done.
Speaker 1And all this stuff was embarrassing and silly, and it did damage to the institution, which is why it was of public interest. And Meghan remembers. Remains a kooky individual who sells overpriced calendars. And jam. And jam. And it's funny. And it's fine to laugh at that, because it just adds to the gaiety of the nation. But what I perhaps might finish on is suggesting that these revelations do give us an opportunity to adjust our relationship with Meghan at the moment when she's returned to Britain. Yeah. I mean, doesn't it seem. Doesn't it seem. Right at this moment to say, OK, given what we now know, let's start again?
Speaker 2Well, I think that works both ways. And actually, when it comes to kind of familial startings again, that's probably down to the King and Prince William, right? But I will say this. I mean, this discovery, if true, and he denies the allegations, about your own father, I mean, it's probably the worst thing you could ever find out, Tim. Yeah. I think you'd have to have a heart of stone to not have some sympathy. I mean, this is horrific.
Speaker 1And by the way, as you say, even if it's an allegation, even if it isn't true, the allegation itself, having your father accused of this is an incredibly traumatic thing to have. And one's heart has to go out to her, which is why I'm saying it's up to the royal family to decide how they handle the return of the Sussexes. But for the media. And the nation. Perhaps this is a moment for us to go to Meghan. Do another. Prove. how good we can be as British people and say, right, the past is forgotten. Let's start over. And is there anything we can do to help? To quote Tom Bradbury, how are you? Maybe it's time to ask Megan, how are you?
Speaker 2Tim, we weren't expecting to speak today. So great to speak to you on this very wet and windy Friday. We're going to be back tomorrow with a Saturday special that features Jeremy Hunt and Lord Lamont, two ex-chancellors talking and looking ahead of John Healy's budget next Wednesday, October the 28th. And then on Sunday, I've got a royalty coming with Hannah Furness, who is off to the Caribbean with the King and Queen. So until then, thanks for listening. I'm Jeremy Hunt. I'll see you next time.
PodcastTranscript AI