MATHEMATICAL conundrum for you: How many jars of jam would you have to sell to pay for just one night in a luxury brownstone house on the prestigious Upper East Side of New York?
Answer: None . . . if you’re “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.”
Word has it that the multi-million-dollar home of cosmetics tycoon Victoria Jackson is available to Meghan at all times and is where, according to a journalist there to interview her, she was announced by her full title as she entered the room of, er, one.
Both hilariously egotistical and breathtakingly hypocritical considering she and Prince Harry have repeatedly criticised the Royal Family that bestowed the ‘Sussex’ title on them.
But then, what else have they got to offer in return for a luxury lifestyle that their joint earnings just couldn’t sustain?
Clearly, Ms Jackson — whom Meghan calls her “safe harbour” — is impressed by the pomp.
Why else would she give them regular use of her various luxury homes in Los Angeles, which the couple regularly use as a base, in Montecito where Meghan had her 41st birthday party rather than host it in her own house, and the aforementioned one in New York?
It’s also reported that she loans them her Dassault Falcon private jet for trips, saving them a small fortune.
Meghan and Harry might argue that she does all this solely because of their sparkling personalities but Ms Jackson, who came from nothing and built an empire, is a shrewd businesswoman.
So surely there has to be some sort of “you scratch my back” pay-off?
Meghan’s first ever ‘pop up’ store for her vastly overpriced jams and candles is in a bookstore co-owned by Jackson with literary agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh who was instrumental in publishing Harry’s autobiography Spare, and the royal couple have attended several events there.
And Meghan’s make-up artist Daniel Martin has also credited the businesswoman’s ‘No Makeup Makeup’ range after using it on his famous client.
Only a small payback so far, then. But can you imagine our late Queen taking freebies from a rich benefactor?
She was smart enough to know that such largesse rarely comes with no strings attached.
The last royal couple to gravitate greedily towards money was the Duke and Duchess of York, and look what happened to them.
Of course, the impressive Ms Jackson is not Jeffrey Epstein. But that’s not the point.
The monarchy, and anyone connected to it, shouldn’t be for sale.
The Sussexes supposedly “Megxited” from the UK five years ago for a life of “financial independence”, yet they continue to rinse their royal connections for their own commercial gain.
And the only way to stop it is to strip them of all titles.
DRINK? MINE’S A KELLY
IT’S said that the traditional French champagne coupe was originally modelled on the left breast of Marie Antoinette.
Now English winemaker Folc has issued a five-strong collection of coupes, each modelled on the breasts of a different British woman.
Given my fondness for the sparkling stuff, make mine a Kelly Brook.
“RAGE rooms” are erupting all over the country – a place to grab a baseball bat, smash up a variety of defunct household items and vent your feelings of frustration.
One of them, at Activity Dome in Weston-super-Mare, says bookings are up 150 per cent.
And guess what? Ninety per cent of them are women.
I hear you, sisters.
BANTER BAN IS HR WIN
MANAGERS who indulge in office “banter” or fail to act when staff do the same could be guilty of harassment under new equalities guidance.
Even if they don’t actually know it’s happening or dismiss it as a bit of harmless fun.
Updated advice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission says that harassment need not be intentional, but if it violates a person’s dignity, it may still be unlawful.
Which, of course, leaves any boss open to vexatious claims from someone who can simply say they felt their dignity was violated just to try and get rid of them.
In the early 80s, there were no HR departments and one could understand the need for employees to feel greater protection in the workplace.
But now it’s become a vast industry and, one might humbly suggest, it’s in their interests to actively find problems to justify their existence.
As the US philosopher Eric Hoffer once said: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates in to a racket.”
GO OFF GRID, KIDS
BRITON Nathan Trevallion and his Australian wife Catherine live “off grid” with their three kids in rural Italy.
Having bought a tumbledown farm house for €20,000, they grow their own vegetables, draw water from a well, use solar panels for electricity and homeschool the children.
Yet now the Italian authorities have seized their daughters, aged eight and twins of six, and placed them in care over fears for their health because they use an outside loo.
They look pretty healthy to me, and I used an outside loo until I was at least ten so what’s the big deal?
Meanwhile, back in old Blighty, a new report says that children are arriving at primary school incapable of speaking properly but perfectly able to swipe the screen of a device on which many are being exposed to age-inappropriate content.
Another report says one in five nursery-age children aren’t getting enough exercise, while another says Brits are eating fewer vegetables than any time in the past 50 years.
So, when it comes to measuring the wellbeing of the off-grid Trevallion kids against that of youngsters plugged in to supposedly progressive, modern life, it’s easy to see who’s better off.
WHAT is a ‘mansion?’ Discuss. To me, it’s Saltburn, Brideshead, Downton, or one of those modern eyesores with an in-and-out drive on the local street everyone refers to as ‘millionaire’s row.’
But what it most certainly isn’t is a four-bed terraced house in London.
Yet if Chancellor Rachel Reeves brings in the much-trumpeted “mansion tax”, people who scrimped and saved to buy their home in an unfashionable part of the city decades ago and have watched the area rise in value through “gentrification” will be caught in the rumoured range of £2million and over.
So they’ll either have to fork out a hefty annual fee they can ill afford, or sell up and buy an actual mansion in, say, Sunderland where £1million will buy you a stunning, Grade ll-listed, detached house with “stately Victorian architecture and large gardens close to the beach”.
MEET MY NEW MUTT
CHEZ Moore has a new occupant.
Meet Cowboy, an eight-year-old Norfolk terrier who has recently been retired as a stud dog.
As I write, he’s in the vets being neutered.
Cowboy will ride ’em no more.
EXPERTS have warned people to stay away from ‘self-help’ gifts (such as gym membership or weight-loss tea) at Christmas because it can make the recipient feel judged rather than appreciated.
And chaps, while we’re at it, appliances should be avoided too . . . however “state of the art” you think that iron is.
BEYONCE arrived at the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix in a Louis Vuitton racing suit for a 200mph spin with Lewis Hamilton in a Ferrari.
One assumes no air bags were needed.
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