Before Prince Harry took the stage at a Melbourne mental health summit, I texted my ABC broadcaster mate Virginia Trioli a selfie: “Ready for Harry to talk about workplace burnout when he’s never had a workplace!”
Virginia and I have enjoyed a few rollicking public and private debates on the Sussexes, who I see as talented opportunists. She asked if I was there to “troll” Harry: “I bet you end up kind of liking him.”
That’s what I was there to find out. Did I? And if you saw Haz in real life, would you?
First, a bit of scene setting. Harry was 25 minutes late, which left host Professor Melinda Edwards improvising to 300 people who’d paid $1000–plus a head to have their minds blown by a duke.
She was awesome. Riffed about Finland’s energy technology, kelp cultivation, a Bhutanese dish of molten fat: “Does anyone here like chilli? My husband’s allergic.”
When he finally slipped up to the mic, Harry was visually worth the wait. He looked expensive, like Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager. In great nick. Improbably white shirt, beautifully cut suit. Tiny bit tired around the eyes.
But this wasn’t the prince who effortlessly nails children’s hospital visits, can do a half-decent drop punt, charm anyone. It was like he was running an office town hall without enough notice.
Limited stage presence, head down as he rattled through his platitude-laden speech. Social media platforms bad, speaking up good, “it’s a troubled world”, “becoming a husband and father has a way of focusing perspective” etc.
Not boring: Meghan was there! Sitting off to the side, impeccable in white, laser-focused on her man. “Making a difference” is “very depleting” for them, Harry said, but “we all have to believe tomorrow is going to be better than today”. Damn straight.
But. When Haz got onto the Q&A with a fawning Brendan Nelson, he started talking off the cuff and suddenly wasn’t just a middle-aged man who works at a life-coaching business.
Asked where his sense of duty comes from, Harry was fabulously snooty, the Sandhurst officer barging around on a polo pony: “I was born into it.” Like, der, Brendan. “Also, it’s what my mum would want me to do.”
Right answer. Being Diana’s son is his calling card, so he went there, with something that combined brutality with delicacy.
“Grief doesn’t disappear because we ignore it,” he said. “Experiencing that as a kid while in a goldfish bowl under constant surveillance, yes, that will have its challenges.
“And without purpose, that will break you. I was like, ‘I don’t want this job.’ It killed my mum. I stuck my head in the sand for years.”
Legit, I wanted to invite him home for soup and an early night.
Thing is, I can still see Diana’s longer hair like a cloud around her beautiful, happy, exhausted face when she carried Harry from hospital.
I remember him in a puff-sleeve shirt, bashing away on a piano. Dressed as a tiny soldier, dinking his mother on a jet-ski a week or two before she died when he was 12.
Most of all, everyone remembers his untouchable devastation at her funeral, a lost boy walking through London wanting the one thing he could never have again.
So while he’s not much chop as a speaker – I’ve seen more convincing spiels on shopping channels and he should hire Larry Emdur as his speechwriter/chemistry coach – I felt more for Harry than expected.
Not because he’s one of the world’s most famous people, but because at moments I could clearly see the 12-year-old boy again.
Of course, life moves on, but this particular man is frozen in time for a lot of us. And that’s why he’ll always have an audience.
This one gave him a standing ovation. “Loved it. Love him,” said our table mate Rose. At age four, she met Princess Diana at her Melbourne kinder. “He’s as real as you can get for someone like that.”
Maybe. And Virginia, I did end up kind of liking him. Keep that under your hat.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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