For Harry and…saints preserve us!
I attended the most recent Royal Wedding and was astounded by the number of Americans in the crowds around Westminster.
For a country that did their upmost to ditch all association with the British monarchy 240 years ago, they sure do like them royal folk now.
This new series has invited 12 of the most gullible to live on a country estate for eight weeks to compete for the hand of Prince Harry.
The man they are actually fighting over (quite literally, in jelly in a yet-to-be aired episode) is Matt Hicks, who a computer program has calculated looks 99% like Prince Harry (let’s not forget that we share 97% of our DNA with chimpanzees so sometimes it’s the tiny percentages that are the most important).
Just in case we viewers were fooled, a helpful “Not Really Prince Harry” graphic appeared every time Matt spoke on screen. The person who wasn’t Prince Harry seemed like a nice guy and a little embarrassed to be part of the whole thing.
This coyness, along with the helicopter they’d provided him with, a secret service team lurking in the bushes and the fact he liked cricket, only added to the deception that he really was the prince in the eyes of the Americans.
Had these would-be Wallis Simpsons stopped to think they’d surely have realised not even a partying prince like Harry would take part in a TV reality contest and certainly not one with “wanna” in the title (that’s not the Queen’s English).
But when you’re dealing with ladies who introduce themselves as: “I’m Anna Lisa and my occupation is Miss Los Angeles,” anything is possible and the programme makers were out to take advantage of all the naivety on offer.
At the end of the episode, one girl was voted off and tried to save her pretty face by saying: “I don’t normally date gingers,” which just added to the list of people who must have been insulted by this programme and its premise.
In the week that the abysmal film about Grace Kelly’s reign as Princess of Monaco was released, this probably wasn’t the worst example of an American trying to act like a princess for our entertainment.
But as a practice in misogyny it was beyond compare.
I Wanna Marry Harry, ITV2, Wednesday.
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