You’ve forgotten the Millies, Harry? What, even when we had a crafty fag backstage?
PRINCE HARRY is to be commended for his commitment to the servicemen and women wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s certain he has a real empathy with their plight and there can be no doubt that the Invictus Games, which he inspired, are a Good Thing.
But I’m rather startled to hear that he thinks the British media “did not cover” the plight of soldiers who’d been blown up or killed.
Because that’s not how I remember it at all . . .
In 2006, I went to see a paratrooper called Ben Parkinson whose Land Rover had run over a landmine in Afghanistan.
He’d lost both his legs, his spine was twisted, it looked like someone had smashed his skull in with a sledge-hammer, and he was in a coma.
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And there he was, being treated in a general ward at Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital.
I was appalled and wrote a stinging criticism of the situation, which The Sun decided to publish.
Shortly afterwards, a man called Bryn Parry — who sadly died earlier this year — founded Help for Heroes with the aim of raising £5million to build a physio swimming pool at the Ministry of Defence’s run-down military rehabilitation centre in Surrey.
Upon hearing the news, I hosted a party and suggested to friends that we should bang on the doors of five billionaires, asking for them to donate a million pounds each.
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But it was an executive at The Sun who said no.
Instead, they suggested: “If we want to raise awareness of these wounded soldiers, it’d be better if five million people donated a Pound.”
The Sun then shoved all its might behind Help for Heroes and that helped the charity to eventually raise not £5million — but £370million.
And the support didn’t stop there.
The Sun also organised glittering military awards night the Millies, where wounded servicemen and women could mingle with big-name stars and royalty.
I’m amazed Prince Harry doesn’t remember this because I distinctly recall, one year, sneaking backstage with him before the evening began for a crafty fag.
Credit where it’s due
And it wasn’t just The Sun.
Every newspaper was filled for months and years with news of the death and the injuries.
Even the BBC was in on the act, bringing us reams of live footage from the Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett, where everyone came outside to stand in sombre silence as the conveyor belt of coffins rolled by.
I know that Harry has a problem with the media.
He’s got it into his head that it’s the root of all evil.
But he’s obviously letting this rage cloud his judgment.
And no good can come of that.
Look at it this way.
I have a problem with Harry.
I don’t like much of what he’s doing these days.
But I began this piece by giving credit where credit was due.
Harry should think about doing the same thing.
COKE’S SAVING GRACE
AMAZING news from the lungs of the world.
In the past year, illegal logging in certain parts of the Amazon rainforest has fallen by a whopping 76 per cent.
So what’s responsible for this?
Have the loggers read about those pink-haired young ladies throwing soup at paintings then seen the error of their ways?
Or has there been an incredible government crackdown?
’Fraid not. The fact of the matter is that the local cocaine baron doesn’t like these people with chainsaws trampling all over his crops and has instructed his 2,000-strong private army to keep them out.
So. Cocaine. Makes you boring as hell but it does save the rainforest.
AFTER the air traffic control meltdown this week, airlines were furious, saying that they pay a fortune for the service and then have to compensate passengers when it breaks down.
One aviation source was quoted as saying: “It’s hard to think of any industry where something outside of your control happens and you are expected to pay millions.”
Er, farming?
No Fury like Paris – the lady’s a knockout
I DON’T like boxing and I can’t abide fly-on-the-wall documentaries about pink people who live pink lives in pink houses.
But I’ve always been slightly fascinated by Tyson Fury, so I decided to watch At Home With The Furys.
And wow. What a show. I did the whole lot in one sitting.
It’s about Tyson, of course and it’s about the gypsy lifestyle and boxing as well, but it’s also about mental health issues.
Not the sort of issues people have when their boss has been horrid.
No. I mean real mental health issues. Mood swings. Fanaticism. And the dark, unexplainable pits of despair.
It’s also about Morecambe, which thanks to some excellent drone work, looks like St Tropez.
And its about Tyson’s kids, who seem to be just about as brilliant as kids can be.
I loved it all. But what I loved most of all was his wife, Paris.
I’ve been impressed by lots of people over the years but no one gets close to this towering vision of inner strength and down-to-earth straightforwardness.
How she lives that life with that man is hard to understand.
But just occasionally, you see her looking at him as he’s planning to buy an airport or go to Iceland for no reason and it’s very obvious that, despite everything, she absolutely adores him.
It’s not editing. I know how editing works.
She’s the real deal. She’s a saint.
BIT OF A LATE CALL . . .
A FORMER Tory MP called Antoinette Sandbach is no one of any great note.
But for some reason a Cambridge University historian has worked out that her great-great-great-great grandfather was involved in the slave trade.
This seems to be happening quite a lot these days.
Poor old Benedict Cumberbatch was trotting through life quite happily when someone worked out that one of his distant ancestors had fired the arrow which hit King Harold in the eye.
And it makes me worried.
How long before someone decides that my great uncle’s great uncle’s uncle chopped Anne Boleyn’s head off?
It must be a worry for the producers of Who Do You Think You Are?
Because who’s going to sign up to do the show when there’s a risk that they discover their great grandad was at Auschwitz?
In a watchtower.
ULEZ IS EASY TO DEFEAT
SO, the people of Outer London who don’t have access to an expensive modern car now have to pay a million pounds in Ulez charges if they want to pop across town to see their granny.
Naturally, many people are upset by this and are now rampaging around at night smashing the Ulez cameras or spray-painting the lenses with paint.
This is silly. You’re vandalising something that you paid for.
It’s like smashing up your own house because you don’t like your electricity bill.
Far better, surely, to accept that the whole system is based on your car’s numberplate.
So why not just organise a giant swapsie?
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You put the plate from the man at No 32 on your car and he takes the plate from the guy at No 68 and so on.
The whole system would crash. And if you were lucky, you might find someone who’d let you have FUKH4N.