The BBC’s royal correspondent has blasted Prince Harry as “paranoid and misguided” over his latest attacks on the British media.
Nicholas Witchell, 70, who is retiring at the end of the year after 25 years reporting on the Royal Family, said Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are “overly sensitive” – adding they should “make use of the media” rather than knock it.
Witchell said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex should be “more prepared to take the knocks with the positive moments”, during a recent interview with the Sunday Times.
He said it had been a “huge loss” when the Duke and Dutchess of Sussex moved to the US, adding that if they had been “prepared to try harder” and if Meghan had been “less impatient” and “less inclined to see well-meaning people as being in some way against her”, the couple could have achieved a great deal as part of the Firm.
The royal correspondent dismissed rumours that Buckingham Palace was against them from the start, saying their team “bent over backwards to accommodate them and to be in sympathy with her”.
He said: “Not one of them was the archetypal Buckingham Palace courtier and if anyone was going to carry it off, that team would have done so.
“Meghan is clearly a very intelligent, articulate, ambitious woman, and you would have thought she would have appreciated the fact that these people were working so hard to make it work.”
Witchell admitted that the palace could have tried harder however, saying there was a “clash of cultures” at the palace saying Harry was “not suited to the role”.
He said there was occasions where Harry had been treated badly by the press, but said his current complaints were “misjudged, misguided, a touch paranoid”.
According to Witchell, the pair’s paranoia had meant they were “failing to recognise the bigger picture, the opportunities that they have”
He added: “They’re obsessed – he is certainly obsessed – with the way the media portrays him. Unhealthily so.”
This Christmas, the royal expert will report on King Charles’s festive message from New Broadcast House for the last time, along with the royal gathering at Sandringham.
He told the newspaper that the single worst moment of his 48-year career was drying up while reporting on the birth of the Sussexes’ son Archie in 2019 – adding that “maybe subconsciously I just wasn’t that interested” in the couple.
