Hello from Los Angeles! I’m back after six months (far too long) and I’m pleased to say the sunset skies still make me gasp.
I also discovered that a Trader Joe’s is opening right by my house. My American readers will understand how thrilling that is, and for everyone else, do you want me to bring you back one of their viral tote bags?
Today we’re taking the temperature of:
Chanty Beluga
The sneaky social media trend that fools the feed
The Gen Z group that’s become “entirely isolated”
Pop’s new pink-haired girlie
Trump’s human printer
Young people’s AI fears
Paid subscribers get the full digest, free subscribers get a soupçon. But first a word on the Sussexes…
Well, well, well, after six years in California Prince Harry and Meghan are doing a spectacular u-turn and returning to Britain.
Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. The couple have been anything but predictable, and have a tendency to be impulsive. Who remembers the Sussex Royal branding debacle or the American Riviera Orchard trademark fiasco?
But it is astonishing, as it was only last May that Harry told the BBC that because of security concerns he couldn’t see, “a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK.” And that was after he admitted that he didn’t know “how much longer my father [King Charles] has,” following his cancer diagnosis in 2024.
Before that Harry had made no secret of how miserable they were when they last lived in Britain. The prince told James Corden that the “toxic” British press “was destroying my mental health,” and when giving evidence in a trial against the Daily Mail earlier this year he said the paper had made Meghan’s life “an absolute misery”. The pair even dubbed the journey out of the UK to start their new life in North America the “freedom flight”.
What changed? We don’t really know, but we do know that they’ll be making the return journey to Britain very soon as their two children - Prince Archie, seven, and five-year-old Princess Lilibet - have been enrolled in a British school and term starts in early September.
It’s thought that the Sussexes have chosen to base themselves in a private home outside of London. My money is on the Cotswolds, which has become a magnet for Americans in recent years.
What they’ll do there is also a bit of a mystery. The Australian royal correspondent Bronte Coy, revealed earlier that Meghan had landed some sort of acting gig. And there is, of course, her lifestyle empire, As Ever, and Archewell Productions that’s the vehicle for their various media endeavours. Whether that’s enough to fund their security, lifestyle and now three homes in Montecito, Portugal and Britain is one of my biggest questions. And that’s because I have the words of the sharpest royal watcher - Tina Brown - ringing in my ears.
In March Brown wrote a blistering piece headlined, “Are the Windsors Underestimating the Sussex Problem?” in which she shrewdly pointed out that after a string of missteps Meghan and Harry could become a ticking time bomb for the royals if they became cash-needy. And that was before Harry lost a court case with the Daily Mail. “What else do they have to sell?” Brown asked. The royals will hope it’s not another tell-all book.
Ghost posting… Young people are so over algorithmic feeds they’re developing crafty strategies to build their online profiles without pushing content into feeds.
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