Chickens, upspeak and ‘repeading’ – the Californication of Prince Harry
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Well, well, well, whaddya know. Amid all the many, many thousands of words published over the last few days about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, we seem to have ignored what is inarguably – I said no arguments – the key news line: Prince Harry’s accent has upped sticks and headed west faster than Piers Morgan called out by his own weatherman.
After a solid hour of the Duchess of Sussex and Oprah thrashing out various sincere, heartfelt and troubling matters, in came H, Hazza, Huzzah, who instantly sounded as if he hadn’t only exchanged life as a working royal for life as an amateur chicken innkeeper/podcaster/content producer/monarchy slayer, but swapped his Etonian ‘T’s for distinctly Californian ‘D’s while he’s at it.
“Securidy” came up a lot. So did “Spodify”, and “repeading”. The of inflection of sentences rose to a sunny, like, crescendo? Does that make sense? Are you reading me? And so we were pressed to ask, is the Californication of Prince Harry moving up a notch?
As with any subject that goes to the heart of a 1200-year-old constitutional monarchy, to understand this crucial matter it is best to leaf through the dusty pages of history. Web pages, I mean; and going back no more than a month or two ago.
“Every single raindrop that falls from the sky relieves the parched ground,” Harry informed us in December, during a conference with charities and NGOs hosted by Waterbear. “What if every one of us was a raindrop? If every single one of us cared?”
How the Duke of Sussex found the lyrics to an extra verse for Michael Jackson’s Earth Song were neither here nor there, because the point – aside from his broader, valid one about the environment – was that the sixth-in-line to the throne had evidently shirked the stiff, heavy mantle of British oratory and slipped on the breezy, insubstantial shawl of US influencer-speak.
At other events, he spoke of “popping the hood”, wished people well for “the holidays”, and said, “Hey, I saw some arugula and cilantro on the sidewalk right next to a trash can full of pacifiers that some carpetbagger must have left and it got me so pissed I almost tore my pants off!”
He didn’t actually say that last one, but he might, and that’s the interesting, isn’t it? He might. Anyway, inevitably, the accent morphed next, starting with an eyebrow-raising “twennytwenny” in the first Archewell podcast trailer and shifting from there.
For clarity, if there were a chart representing the slide of a native Briton to full American drawl, starting on our side of the Pond, it might look like this:
Phase 1) That Jeremy Clarkson-type 80s businessman chat, where the whole accent might not drift much but certain vowels and inflections definitely end up in the Irish Sea. Tony Blair fits here, too, when he wasn’t trying Mockney.
Phase 2) Peter and John, the hard-drinking, constantly tormented, sideburned Fry and Laurie characters who ran Uttoxeter’s premier health club and always checked you meant “UK time?”
Phase 3) James Corden’s Buckinghamshire by way of Berkeley pardypeople patter.
Phase 4) Whatever Daniel Craig was doing in Tomb Raider.
Phase 5) Actual John Barrowman.
Prince Harry currently resides somewhere between phases 2 and 3. At this rate, though, who could bet against accidentally completing a home run, before having to make an unedifying U-turn in an attempt to regain his old voice, setting him on a whole new five-phase Atlantic return voyage that includes Monica and Phoebe’s friend Amanda Buffamonteezi in Friends, Madonna’s harrowing Guy Ritchie years twang, and ends up at Gillian Anderson? Not me, not me.
It is clear: Prince Harry is – to put it in a way he would approve of these days – on a journey. Destination? Full Santa Barbara A-list bro.
The tan has some way to go. The fashion choices arguably need even more work (during a recent interview with Corden, he cosplayed as David Cameron eating chips on a wall in Cornwall), but yoga, meditation, and healing crystals have all become part of his life.
So has keeping hens, which means he has something in common with Los Angeles neighbours Jennifer Garner, Reese Witherspoon and Lady Gaga, plus Mrs Tweedy from Chicken Run. Icons, all of them.
The Californication is gathering pace, and we await the next developments eagerly. You can take the boy oudda Windsor – sorry, stepping back oudda Windsor – but can you take the Windsor oudda the boy? More as it comes.
