Top Lawyer Marcus Johnstone on The Royalist

Dearly beloved subscribers,

When I started this Substack just over a year ago, I tried doing a few Substack Lives. I have to say I found the format incredibly poor. It was basically two people in a box talking on their phones. Substack seems to think this is hyper-authentic, but the reality, I think, was that Substack was never originally conceived as a video platform and simply didn’t have the tools to let me do video the way I wanted.

There is allegedly a way to co-stream live from the streaming program I use (Streamyard) to both YouTube and Substack, but I have to confess that on the few occasions we tried “generating keys”, it was a complete disaster and seemed to mess things up on both mediums.

So what I ended up with was a decision to keep the writing on Substack, which I felt was very much a literary-first platform (certainly when I signed up to Substack I wasn’t expecting to see a load of video; it’s more library vibes, isn’t it?), and to keep the video content on YouTube.

This was a slightly retrofitted excuse/accommodation rather than my first choice. My Substack subscribers are the cream of the crop. You are the most important people to me, you are what sustains the business, you are the thousand true fans (or whatever you want to call it), and I’ve been looking for a while for a way to get the video to you, if you want it, without you having to go to the noisy, shorts-filled, advert-riddled, tabloid YouTube interface.

This is going to become especially important in the next few months, as we’re hoping to introduce members-only videos on YouTube. I don’t want my Substack subscribers to feel I’m trying to pressure them into subscribing to the YouTube channel as well. So I’ve been trying to find a way to share the members-only YouTube content I’ll be launching in the coming weeks and months here, directly and natively on Substack.

All of which is a very long way round to saying: this video is a test run to see if the system works, and I’d love your feedback.

What you have here is a “live” I recorded last night with Marcus Johnstone, who, if you’ve ever watched my YouTube channel, you may be familiar with. He is an absolutely brilliant solicitor. He usually specialises in criminal matters, but does a lot of work around reputation as well, and he has been our guide through the whole Harry v. Daily Mail court case. I had him on the show for an hour last night talking about the costs judgment and what it means for Harry and Meghan.

The crux of the ruling is that Harry and Meghan ran their case with such complete disregard for legal norms that the judge has said there is no limit on how much of the $50 million the Daily Mail spent they are entitled to try to claim back from the claimants. That is very, very unusual. Marcus is brilliant at explaining why it’s so unusual, and why it remains something of a mystery to other insiders in the legal profession as to how it ever got as far as it did. I really hope you enjoy it.

If it all works out, this is going to be the way we get the video content to Substack subscribers without anyone feeling they’re being asked to pay extra for a YouTube subscription. It won’t be possible to do it in real time (yet), so there will be a delay. At the moment all of this is free on YouTube, and there is no advantage at this stage in subscribing to the YouTube channel other than to show your support for The Royalist. That is going to change in the next couple of weeks, and I want to be clear with my Substack subscribers that I am not trying to shake you down for a second subscription.

I really appreciate that you subscribe to me directly here. Because of the way these platforms run their businesses, a Substack subscription is much more valuable to me (I get to keep more of it). YOU ARE THE PRIORITY.

All of this to say: thank you so much. The subscription price is going up next week. It’s only going up by a dollar a month, so it’s not a big deal, but as an existing subscriber your price wont change.

For most of you what really matters, I suspect, is not the cost but the quality of the product I’m bringing you, and with Harry and Meghan now coming back to MY PATCH, there is going to be a lot to write about — and talk about with our stellar guest. I’m really hoping I can share it with you here.