Where's Andrew going to get the money for that?

Well, I think that's the core of this whole ridiculous argument that the king is allegedly telling him, please don't use my money.

I mean, I know the king doesn't carry cash, though he may not be familiar with the concept.

But the whole point of money is that it is what's called fungible, right? Which means that you can split it up.

You can spend it on whatever you want.

Now, unless the king wants to go down the road of saying, do you know what? brother of mine, dearest brother, it might be better if I paid for your cook directly, if I paid for your valet directly, if I paid for your gardener directly, if I paid for all your meals that are still arriving from the kitchens at Sandringham House directly, and we take care of your living expenses.

You know, that to me feels like the only way they can control this.

Talk about that for a second.

Oh, thank you

... and loving reading all the comparisons that you've been making.

And you raise this really interesting point about why did they come back on a private jet.

And I, I felt that it was a very performative gesture.

As you say, why, why not just come back on a nice first class flight, slip in quietly, if that's what you want, if you want a quiet life, right? Why would you land the world's biggest, vulgarest private jet on the tarmac at Birmingham Airport? And the reality is it's a massive finger to the royal family, isn't it? It's a massive all your pathetic traditions of modesty, your cornflakes in your Tupperware boxes, your EasyJet flights to Aberdeen Airport.

You know, we have made it, and whatever you wanna say about us, now this is how we get around.

And I, I just think, I think it's absolutely hilarious, you know.

Do you think we should be getting some sort of a statement out of the palace? Do you think this is undermining the King's reign at the moment? Do you think he comes across as, as looking weak?

Why is Charles inviting him to Balmoral?

Hi, Paula.

Yeah, well, I think there's, um, so many different strands to think about here.

And I mean, look, the, the bottom line is, uh, as we were talking about the other day on the Royalist podcast, everybody's looking at the behavior of King Charles and saying, "Why is he doing this?" And people really can't give any credible explanations for all of the different things he's said Doing in terms of, well, it's good for the monarchy, or it's good for this, or it's good for that, other than, you know, blood is blood, which, which is what we keep coming back to.

So there was this story in The Sun this week saying that Andrew, uh, had turned down an invite to Balmoral.

Well, I actually w- when I rewrote the story for my Substack, I actually led on the fact that he had been invited at all, which I, I think is probably, you know, w- I felt f- from a news line was, was much more interesting than the fact that Andrew had nobly or magnificently or whatever tu- turned it down.

Um, and I think that the, the, the problem is, is that if you want Andrew to be part of the family and you want to keep inviting him to church services, and you want to invite him on a holiday, and you want to invite him to do things, then that's fine.

Why is that?

Of course, yes

... of course, they had to confirm it.

Um, and, and I, I've been reporting for quite some time that Charles is very, very keen to welcome Harry back to the United Kingdom.

I've been very clear that I personally think this is a mistake, but that's frankly neither here nor there, is it? You know, that, that's just my opinion.

Who am I? Why, why do they bother about...

Why should they bother about me? The point is that, you know, please, boys, don't make my final years a misery.

Right? That, that trans- translation is, "I want you two to shake hands, to knock your heads together, and to get on and get over this, and I'm the King, and I'm laying down the rules, and those are what the rules are." Um, it, it leaves William in a, a really, really invidious and difficult position because what is William going to do now, right? Is he gonna say, "I'm not coming to Sandringham if Harry's going", and look like a five-year-old? Or is he gonna say, "I'm gonna be the bigger person, and I'm gonna smile broadly at, at my brother and, um, you know, never complain and never explain, and be the embodiment of that"? So it, it's, it's a really, really difficult situation, but, but it, it doesn't come as a huge...

Yes

Was he not even aware that perhaps it wouldn't go the way he was hoping it would go? Didn't he get even an inkling when Buckingham Palace, AKA King Charles, basically engaged in a public spat with him over where he would stay?

Well, that this is what's sort of so been so unbelievable about this whole thing, and I think what this really gets to the core of is the absolutely chaotic organization at the heart of what is left of the very, uh, gutted and denuded Sussex organization.

So on, I can't even remember when it was in, in all this, this madness, but at one point where there'd been, you know, a load of back and forth about who was gonna be staying where, um, on this, you know, famous WhatsApp group that they communicate with journalists through.

Somebody on that group sort of just said, "Look, what, what's actually going on? What, what, you know, what are you saying that he, he, he was invited to Buckingham Palace and he," you know, "they're saying that he turned the invite down and then suddenly sought to visit." And, and basically we've been told by Harry's spokesperson that Harry was conducting these negotiations direct.

I mean, it's an extraordinary indictment of what's kind of h- you know, how arrogant Harry is, how, what a difficult position, frankly, his staff are put into by this mercurial man, you know, changing his mind from one moment to the next, and clearly not looping anybody into it.

I mean, the idea that Harry is just kind of emailing some accommodation manager at Buckingham Palace, I mean, it was just, it, it was farcical really.

And, um, you know, uh, for everybody watching, it was in, in a way it was quite amusing.

Mm-hmm.

Tom, what the hell is going on?

I think what you're seeing, Katie, and Jo, and Grant, and Victoria, it's lovely to be here, I think what you're seeing is the pathology of Harry Ha- paranoia.

And the paranoia that Harry has is, he's been talking about it for years.

He's been talking about how he, you know, can't handle camera flashes.

He can't cope with this.

Everyone's, you know, wants history to repeat itself.

There's dark forces trying to kill him.

So is he actually using this trip, do you think, as a way of, I don't know, putting the King over a, over a barrel, trying to get the King to intervene and say, "Okay, dear boy, well, we'll give you the security, and we can clearly see in light of this, um, security risk assessment that you and your team have conducted, you do indeed need security." 'Cause Tom, if the King wanted to intervene, he could, correct?

[laughs]

Um, I think it's will be seen ...

I think that comment will be seen for what it is, which is an unbelievably self-serving, uh, remark to say that ... to imply that, you know, this is a tremendous sadness that has just been visited on them.

As if they didn't completely [laughs] cause it themselves by giving interviews to Oprah Winfrey saying that their family was racist, that they were cold, that they were heartless, that they wouldn't, you know, in his book, that they wouldn't even lend you a, a dab of, of lip gloss, um, that they made you cry, they lied about it, they, they sold you out to the newspapers, that they sacrificed you on your PR altar, that your father was a sort of pathetic weak figure who walked around dragging his teddy bear with him.

I mean, the idea that this is, uh, some random cause of sadness to them is, is so, is such a manipulation of what the, the sequence of what actually happened.

And I mean, I've been told very frankly by friends of William and Catherine that they absolutely loathe them.

They completely blame Meghan for what has happened, and, you know, we can see there's so much evidence of how close Harry and William were.

Yes

So we start from that point when discussing his advice for his younger traveling self.

self.I think from the point of view of anxiety and anxiety prevention, there'd be a f- a few things, and I'll, I'll try and be sort of quick about them.

I mean, there are sorts of measures that I've learnt to take to prevent anxiety, and then if it comes on to, you know, deal with it at, you know, at the time, which I didn't know about when I was younger.

And I think when I was younger, certainly, I-- in the book, I, I sort of deal quite a lot with something that a lot of travelers will do to try to, you know, deal with nerves and, and a- anxiety, but also boredom, which is sort of drinking, basically.

And it took me far too late in my life and my sort of career as a traveler [chuckles] and a travel writer to realize that actually you only exacerbate the situation if you are already anxious, and you-- and there are a number of anecdotes in the book where you're just, you know, sort of hoping to drown my sorrows or drown my anxiety, and it just, the opposite effect takes place.

And I think also generally more about, you know, I would go back and say to my younger self to take more care about the food that I ate and get more sleep and just look after myself generally.

I mean, I'm not hugely good at looking after myself, even as a middle-aged [chuckles] person-

Yeah.

Sorry, not sorry.

[laughs] Um, I think that as journalists, I think it's incredibly important to remember that your job is not to have an op- you can have an opinion and you can write an opinion piece, but your job is, is not to take sides.

Your job is to go and have a look and write down what you see.Um, or go and have a talk to somebody and try and figure out whether they're telling you the truth or whether they're trying to soft soap you.

Um, so at the end of the day, turning up to something is always the best way to see what's really going on.

And what I would say about Meghan is that she is a very, very competent performer, right? She could deliver that speech.

She could hit her points.

Like, she looked the part, you know, the hair.

Is it gonna have r- red hair like its father? Um, and so I, I totally agree with you, but I also feel like the reason why I'm consistent with it is because these people matter, and they're going to matter, you know, hundreds of years from now, so I want the story to be correct.

It is inappropriate to speak for this woman who, who can't defend herself or correct the record, right? And, and it's especially sleazy when he's just saying things that benefit his ultimate objective.

Well, I think that you're, you're absolutely right.

You know, there, there is this, um, culture sometimes in the media of, uh, you know, saying that, that people who've passed on said certain things because, um, one of the wonderful things about, um, dead people is that they can't sue you.

Um, it's impossible legally to defame somebody who has died.

That is just the fact, right? The estate can't sue you.

Nobody can sue you.

So you can say whatever you like.

[laughs] That's hilarious

Um, what was the energy level like?

So as we know, the King has been having treatment for cancer.

Um, it's not something you read, um, a great deal about in the UK media, um, but for various reasons that we don't need to burden our, our listeners with right now.

Um, but I, I can tell you, Joanna, I've actually got some really in- interesting, um, exclusive information on, on that front.

So I found out that Charles was, the treatment that he was having in the run-up to Christmas was a, it, the core of the treatment was a weekly injection of an incredibly novel and very, very expensive combination of immunotherapy and RNA, um, drugs, which of course both famously associated with, with the COVID vaccine.

Um, absolutely cutting edge experimental stuff, and y- and you'll remember that at Christmas, the King gave an, a, a speech saying that, that the treatment was going incredibly well, and that he was gonna be able to cut back on the treatment.

Um, that is a- absolutely correct.

Um-Is William champing at the bit to get going? Does he want to make big changes to the royal family? What are you hearing about how he plans to eventually pick up the royal orb, as it were?

So there is a large area in the front for them to come.

I mean, I thought it was very sad that it wasn't televised by the BBC.

I think that if ever anyone was going to watch the Commonwealth service, it would have been this year.

I think it's an extraordinary decision from this corporation that... is supposed to be representing the British people and doing stuff that is of interest to them that maybe other people wouldn't.

Because I would have thought that to study how that group came together, how they interacted with each other, how they were with each other would have been so interesting this year for people to see on their television screens to study and to look at because of, you know, the disaster that they've been through with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor since the beginning of the year.

So, and I just fundamentally, I felt that it is, quite sad that people the commonwealth was the queen's thing right wasn't it the queen was passionate about the commonwealth and there'd always been voices saying oh what is the commonwealth is it really a thing so there's always been a slightly nebulous strange thing the commonwealth and i feel it was very much held together by the fourth of Queen Elizabeth's personality and her sort of iron discipline that everybody had to show up at Commonwealth Day.

Like you had to show up.

Would anyone really want to buy it? Would they want to trust it? Would they believe anything that she says in it?

But Tom, why don't you take it from there?

Yeah.

So I mean, look, it, it has been the most extraordinary s- couple of weeks for the royal family.

I, I s- suppose big picture, the way I am, I'm thinking about this, I, I don't know if you, you know your physics, Hugh, but there, there's a term in physics called stable equilibrium versus unstable equilibrium.

And a very good ex-example of something in stable equilibrium is like in Newton's cradle, right? You know the things that bang like that, and you lift up one and they go like that, and they revert to their original shape.

A typical example of something in unstable equilibrium is a pile of snooker balls, right? And you tip one and they all collapse, and they can't come back to their original shape.

And I think we've always assumed that the royal family is in a stable equilibrium, that when these things happen, when Princess Diana dies or Charles gets divorced or even, you know, these huge things like, like the abdication in 1936, we sort of assume that ultimately it'll come back to the shape that it originally was.

So all of this is happening in plain sight almost, right?