How Prince Harry Felt About His Book Being Mocked

Prince Harry’s book was “great stand-up fodder” but there were no “hurt feelings” after a series of comedy roasts, royal author Omid Scobie told Newsweek.

The Duke of Sussex’s memoir Spare was the fastest-selling non-fiction book in history and is thought to have made him huge sums, but it also sparked ridicule.

In particular, his own narration of a section of the audiobook in which he described the memory of Princess Diana wafting back to him as he applied her favored Elizabeth Arden lip cream to his frostbitten penis went viral in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that described it as a “Freudian nightmare.”

Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Rock and Trevor Noah, previously a guest on Meghan Markle’s Archetypes podcast, were among those to make jokes about the book.

And later, South Park and Family Guy included skits at the Sussexes’ expense as polling for Newsweek showed their popularity in America tumbling. They have since partially recovered their standing, particularly among Democrats.

Scobie, author of new royal book Endgame, is no stranger to media storms having been subject to a prolonged backlash from the British media after his first book Finding Freedom.

And he has been at the center of another frenzy since his latest biography, which named the royals accused of racism by Meghan Markle in error in its Dutch language version.

In an interview with Newsweek before publication, he addressed how comedians reacted to Harry’s book.

“I mean, there are obviously things in the book that were great stand-up fodder,” he said. “From what I understand, he [Harry] gets it, he got it. You know, I don’t think there was any kind of hurt feelings about that.

“And quite honestly, if you’re a public figure, a celebrity, you want to be included in those late-night monologues. You want to be an SNL skit, these are the things that show that you’ve made it.

“And I don’t think it comes from a negative, it doesn’t come from the same place as a Daily Mail piece, or [Daily Mail columnist] Jan Moir op-ed, it’s very different.”

Despite the ridicule, Scobie said he does not believe Harry regrets the infamous frostbite story.

“I haven’t heard anything about regretting anything about that,” he said. “But I think it had been, by the time it had come out. He had been read so many times among the people around him and himself. But they must have been extremely confident about everything that they were pressing out.

“I also think that whether he liked it or not, he would have had editors love him that would have reminded him that to tell one story, you have to kind of go warts and all.”

“My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized,” Harry wrote. “The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan.

“I’d been trying some home remedies, including one recommended by a friend. She’d urged me to apply Elizabeth Arden cream. My mum used that on her lips. ‘You want me to put that on my todger?’

“‘It works, Harry. Trust me.’ I found a tube, and the minute I opened it, the smell transported me through time. I felt as if my mother was right there in the room.

“Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there. ‘Weird’ doesn’t really do the feeling justice.”

Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.

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