Like every sane human being with even an ounce of self-respect I cannot dredge up one atom of my being to give a monkey’s cuss about who Kris Jenner is. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl, or someone cynically monetising that indeterminate and increasingly annoying space in between.
But Prince Harry, who is still one of our most senior royals and, whether he likes it or not, a very high-profile representative of Britain to the rest of the world; him I do care about. And Harry went to Kris’s party. So I had to clear up who Kris Jenner is.
Turns out she’s the mum of Kim Kardashian. Which sort of makes her the mother of everything wrong with planet Earth in 2025 encapsulated in human form.
As far as I can work out, Kim Kardashian is world famous for possessing a freakishly massive arse and running a knickers company apparently valued at four billion dollars. Her latest creation is a pair of pants resembling a pubic bush. Why didn’t she just make a pair printed with the slogan “I am in desperate need of therapy”?
She was on Graham Norton this week wearing something which made her look like she’d somehow been squeezed into a tube of toothpaste.
Because she and her mum (yes… mum – not mom) are what we used to call exhibitionists. They live every aspect of their lives in public – even the bits that shame and decency would, in a saner age, dictate absolute privacy.
No?
These are the dictionary definitions of “exhibitionist”.
behaving extravagantly in order to attract attention.
having or showing a compulsion to display one’s genitals or other intimate body parts or to behave sexually in public.
Did any cap ever fit more snugly?
And yet that peculiar family’s long-running series (which triggered so many spin-offs) is now in its 4,578th season.
Marx wrote religion was the opium of the masses, but only because he hadn’t watched Keeping Up With the Kardashians.
So what has all this got to do with Harry?
Well obviously because this is the world he now inhabits.
We were told in so many gushing celeb articles this weekend “the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were dressed to the nines while attending Kris Jenner’s party, which took place at Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ $165 million mansion.” And gazillions of variations on same.
Yet we were also told: “Harry, 41, had a stern expression on his face as he headed into Jeff Bezos’s $165million mansion, with a poppy pinned to his black tuxedo, to rub shoulders with A-listers and tech moguls.
“Meanwhile, a poppy-less Meghan, 44, trailed close behind, grinning from ear-to-ear, in a skin-tight black top and wrap skirt on the eve of Remembrance Sunday.”
Ouch.
And they’re right, he looked like a man who was sulking and he looked like a man who was troubled.
And maybe the reason, just maybe, is that Harry is finally realising the utter vacuity of the choices he has made, of the world he now inhabits.
An Atlantic away, at almost exactly the same time that Harry was sulking at this dime-a-dozen celebrity party, his dad was overseeing one of the most moving Remembrance Day services for years.
That meant something.
It meant something to anyone with compassion, it meant something to anyone British, and it clearly meant something very deeply to King Charles who, at times, seemed to be struggling to fight back the tears.
And the stark-staringly obvious thing is – I think it meant something deeply to Harry too.
The only part of Harry’s wretched autobiography “Spare” which displayed any authenticity was when he was talking about his time in the forces, and serving his country – very bravely it has to be said – in Afghanistan.
That’s our Harry if you ask me.
Not the jam-selling optional extra to a b-list actress on the make.
Royal author Tom Bower said of the Prince: “He looks fed up being paraded, one day at sports match and on another day at a celeb party. Clearly, he is now worried what revenge his brother might one day carry out against himself and his ambitious wife.”
I don’t quite know what that sinister revenge threat means. Could Harry follow his shamed uncle into being de-royaled?
I don’t think he deserves that. There’s still a lot of good in Harry and, given a chance, a lot of service.
But, and forgive the antediluvian rhetoric for one moment, he needs to man-up and start wearing the trousers now and then.
That’s the only way we’ll get our Harry back.