Meghan Markle’s book, The Bench, is so terrible it’s funny

Copies of Meghan Markle's book The Bench on a display in Europe's largest bookstore Waterstones Piccadilly. Picture: Getty Images

I have largely avoided the House of Windsor’s recent travails, the rapid departure of a subset of their own who rejected the privileges of royal birth and marriage, preferring the sort of fame normally associated with celebrity chefs and the inventor of jazzercise.

Leave these people alone with their excruciating emotional pain, I thought.

But that was never going to last because the artist presently known as the Duchess of Sussex, has knocked out a book; a children’s book no less and has done so presumably because children’s books have fewer words. No staring at a blank page with the grim task of knocking out 100,000 of them in vaguely coherent sentences or whispering sweet scandals to a ghostwriter for Meghan. The Bench’s word count comes in at a neat 169 words.

The Bench, by Megahn Markle. Picture: AFP

In what amounts to another triumph of brevity over ability, Meghan Markle’s autograph printed in the book reminds us she aspires to float in the rarefied air of megastardom, where one’s second name has become superfluous. There was Elvis, there is Cher, there sadly is Bono. There will always be Oprah. And now there is Meghan.

The book is not yet on the shelves in Australia, but the reviews are in, and the general consensus is Meghan’s The Bench is a blazing zeppelin crash of drooling schmaltz and bad poetry.

Consider the following:

“Right there on your bench

The place you’ll call home …

With daddy and son …

Where you’ll never be ’lone.”

‘Lone? Was a syllable extinguished to quicken up the iambic pentameter? Or a ghastly typo not picked up in the desk edit? It’s hard to know but if you listen carefully, you can hear George Gordon Byron, the sixth Baron Byron spinning in his grave, doing 360s at such a rate, the energy harvested could power a small city.

The House of Windsor’s benchmark to date on children’s literature is Budgie: The Little Helicopter from the desk of the Duchess of York, in what became a series of books and then an animated children’s television show that at face value is so derivative of a certain community of locomotives with loveable faces, that Ringo Starr may well have contemplated calling in the lawyers but clearly had too much class to chase it up.

Meghan Markle. Picture: AFP

The references to children’s literature and helicopters, brings to mind what may be the funniest story ever told, the night Bill Leak hosted Chopper Read in his inner city apartment in Sydney.

There are few people in this country who would have offered Chopper Read bed and lodging at the drop of a hat but that was Bill, generous to a fault. It was one of the many reasons we loved him.

It was the height of Chopper’s literary notoriety and having knocked out a small library of ‘true’ crime reminiscences, Mark Brandon Read had decided to turn his hand to children’s literature.

The fruit of Chopper’s literary loins was Hooky the Cripple: The Grim Tale of a Hunchback Who Triumphs – a largely autobiographical tale of a vicious brute with a heart of gold with illustrations by artist and friend of Chopper’s, Adam Cullen.

The children’s book was launched at a pub – the San Francisco Hotel in Woolloomooloo, the first sign that the target market for the book had been roughly forgotten. The ceremony over, many beers were consumed. Bill and Chopper hit it off immediately. Long story short, they imbibed heavily at the Frisco and continued with a solid course of liquid refreshment long into the night at licenced premises various.

Mark 'Chopper' Read. Picture: AAP

Bill hit a feature on the pokies and walked away $600 richer. A fine night was had. We know this because Bill was telling the story to his mates, Daily Telegraph cartoonist Warren Brown and abstract impressionist Dave Naseby over a coffee the morning after. “Terrific bloke, Chopper,” Bill said.

Chopper had left early in the morning to catch a flight back to Melbourne, leaving Bill with the golden, if a little blurry, memories of his stay.

And it would have remained in the realms of vaguely interesting anecdotes until Bill reached for his wallet to pay for his coffee and discovered Chopper had emptied its contents at some point in the wee hours prior to departing for the airport. Bill had no cash. The pineapples he had had on hand for random spending were gone. The $600 win on the pokies had vanished, too. Warren paid for the coffees after taking several minutes to compose himself.

'Hooky The Cripple by Mark "Chopper" Read.

Most people who have heard this story almost always miss out on the epilogue, generally because they are laughing too hard, but it bears telling. In the aftermath of the larceny, Chopper wrote a letter to Bill, returning some but not all of the money he’d swiped and in offering one of life’s many lessons, urged Bill to bear him no ill.

“You do know I’m a thief,” Chopper wrote as if no further explanation was required.

It was compelling in an odd sort of way. Chopper had merely ceded to a Pavlovian response. See money, take money.

You see, one must be what one is and more so, not try to be what one isn’t.

And that is a lesson Meghan Markle seems not to have learned just at the minute. Maybe the penny will drop after a cooking show or two.