Come on Thomas Markle, do your daddy duty
NEGLIGENT recluse or unlikely hero — come on Thomas Markle, the choice is yours and the clock is ticking. The father of the bride will not be giving the bewitching Meghan away but it doesn’t have to be this way.
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NEGLIGENT recluse or unlikely hero — come on Thomas Markle, the choice is yours and the clock is ticking.
On Monday, the world learned, via American entertainment site TMZ, the 73-year-old father of future princess Meghan Markle had pulled out of this weekend’s royal wedding of his daughter to the house of Windsor’s most-loved member, Prince Harry.
The father of the bride would not, according to reports, be giving the bewitching Meghan away on Saturday.
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While romantics and royal lovers failed to comprehend how significant is the slight to Meghan, a good number of us found ourselves sympathising with Thomas who, just days earlier, had been caught collaborating with paparazzi photographers to make a quid.
Any who saw the photos of the retired television lighting technician being fitted for a suit in the doorway of a Mexican shop last week might have twigged something was awry.
Not since Aladdin of Agrabah, an upwardly mobile swindler of some note, has a battler’s royal transformation on a public street been so well documented.
Yet there was something oddly charming about the geriatric Markle standing obediently with his arms in the air as a younger man took his ample waist measurement — the back drop a scene of vivid floral silks and damask prints, hardly your standard sharp Mayfair Savile Row tailor.
With the publication of these funny photos this columnist warmed to the Markles for the first time. Here was something touching and real.
Just a few days later we would learn the images were set up — something that would not surprise any seasoned publishing photo editor.
But in England, where the princess brides in fairytales are supposed to have distinguished noble fathers, it did surprise.
The Brits are happy to count the profits of royal fairytale romance but not happy, it seems, for one of the main players in the fairytale to have a benevolent fairy godfather who just happens to be paparazzi photographer.
It simply doesn’t suit the wispy narrative.
Yet it should.
Meghan Markle has spoken lovingly of her father who was married to Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, from 1979 to 1987 after meeting behind the scenes on the US soap General Hospital in the 1970s on which both worked.
In a 2016 Father’s Day Instagram post Meghan wrote: “Happy Father’s Day, daddy. I’m still your buckaroo, and to this day your hugs are still the very best in the whole wide world.
“Thanks for my work ethic, my love of Busby Berkeley films & club sandwiches, for teaching me the importance of handwritten thank you notes, and for giving me that signature Markle nose. I love you xo — Bean.”
In a statement released overnight Kensington Palace said of Markle’s decision to decline his wedding invitation: “This is a deeply personal moment for Ms Markle … She and Prince Harry ask again for understanding and respect be extended to Mr Markle in this difficult situation.”
So now, having, one presumes, pocketed the money from his fairy pap godfather and picked up his new suit, it is time for Thomas — whose love for KFC, beer and cigs has been well documented, proving he is just a mortal man — to show up for his buckaroo, his “Bean”.
For if he does, he can expect to become an everyman hero to dads around the world and be given a huge welcome — not just from his daughter — but also from a good-humoured populous, a fickle media who love a fairytale outcome better than most and one most unlikely fairy godfather.