What a Weekend!
And I don’t mean just for Prince Harry and his new wife Meghan Markle.
Having covered the British Royal Family for more than four decades, I was deluged with interview requests on TV and radio nationwide to bring my 40 years of expertise to the forum.
The local ABC affiliate, KEYT-TV, had presciently booked me a couple of months back to make a number of appearances, which included two shots on the morning show with anchor Joe Buttitta and his meteorologist wife, Kelsey Gerckens, and a remote from my cottage home in Montecito with reporter Alys Martinez. I did a further remote for the Fox Channel’s Kacey Drescher.
Senior reporter John Palminteri interviewed me for KJEE radio, and HLN – the sister cable network for CNN – asked me to do Ashleigh Banfield‘s Crime and Justice, which I taped at the CBTV Studio on State Street, near the Paseo Nuevo.
I also bumped into a former ABC-TV colleague Jeff Greenfield, a speechwriter for the late Senator Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated 50 years ago in June, a tragic event I vividly remember, traveling to London to sign the condolence book that had been set up at the U.S. embassy in Grosvenor Square.
The wedding itself at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, built in the 14th century by King Edward III, lived up to every expectation, with Prince Charles escorting the bride, ravishing in a Givenchy-designed silk gown with a stunning intricately embroidered 15-foot train and a magnificent diamond tiara lent by the Queen, down the aisle, given her father, Thomas Markle, was recovering from heart surgery.
Among the 600 glamorously garbed guests were Santa Barbara Polo Club player Nacho Figueras and his wife, Delfina, and Montecito’s most famous resident, TV talk-show titan Oprah Winfrey.
Harry, 33, looked quite resplendent in his Blues and Royals cavalry uniform, with his brother, Prince William, looking equally dashing as best man.
And, as I predicted here in my column of September 21, 2017, his 92-year-old grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, created him Duke of Sussex, making his former Suits actress bride “duchess” – titles not used since 1843.
I was last at the chapel, where Harry was christened and the Queen will be buried with her father, King George VI and Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, in due course, in 1999 when Prince Edward, the monarch’s youngest son, married Sophie Rhys-Jones becoming the Earl and Countess of Wessex, for MSNBC.
It is to be hoped, having gone off without a hitch in perfect weather, the couple’s marriage will be a true love match, given the Windsors’ past record for less than domestic bliss, including Prince Charles and Diana, Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, and Princess Anne and Mark Phillips.
My fingers are tightly crossed.
