JAN MOIR: Another day, another desperate Montecito dollar. This time with jam on it!

Release time：2024-05-21 16:01:38 Source：Culture Compass news portal

Slice me a loaf and spread the bread of heaven with the ­butter of celebration.

In the week that we learn Prince Harry has lost another court case and taken further steps towards cutting all formal ties with the UK, the first product from American Riviera Orchard has been rolled out and it is — ta da! — a jar of strawberry jam.

Are these two events connected? If you consider that one is a ­heritage fruity pulp boiled until thick, a hot mess that has taken the pith but is still capable of ­giving people the pip and that the other is a jar of jam — then the coincidences are too strong to ignore.

And this is not just any jam! Each jar of the Duchess of ­Sussex's ARO jam is topped with a darling unbleached muslin lid tied with a charmingly rustic piece of ­authentic jam maker's string, la ficelle du confiturier, as Meghan no doubt explains to her dim ­mompreneur friends who haven't acquired a bit of European ­cultural polish like wot she has.

Each jar of the Duchess of ­Sussex's ARO jam is topped with a darling unbleached muslin lid tied with a charmingly rustic piece of ­authentic jam maker's string

In the week that we learn Prince Harry has lost another court case and taken further steps towards cutting all formal ties with the UK, the first product from American Riviera Orchard  is  a jar of strawberry jam

Each of the 50 jars has been numbered, in the manner of ­limited-edition art prints, and sent out to friends, influencers and VIPs. Every jar is swaddled in a linen-lined basket surrounded by giant lemons and frondy sprigs of elderflower — all of which must have cost more than the actual jam.

Mine hasn't arrived yet — it's probably stuck in customs. Or there is no room on ­Meghan's most wanted freebie list, packed with noted jam lovers such as Mr S. Spielberg, Mr Bob Disney, Oprah, Elmo, Big Bird and the assorted wives of Hollywood ­hotshots who might, just might, prove useful in future.

Now look. Do you ­honestly believe I am going to write about every single item that the Duchess of Sussex sells on her American Riviera Orchard brand website? Do you really think I am so ­shallow? So downright mean? Then you are completely correct. I am all that — and less.

For while Meghan's upscale ­marketables might well turn out to be unoriginal, they will always be unignorable. And I am going to love all of it. Bring on the sculpted candles and the charity salad dressings and the foraged-shell napkin rings.

What will the hero product be? Yuzu marshmallows? Calligraphy pen kits for writing encouraging messages on bananas to cheer up sex workers? Live, laugh, love, ladies! You have to look through the rain to see the rainbow!

It has been four long years since Peter Phillips appeared in a television advert flogging Jersey milk ('This is what I drink') to the ­notoriously lactose-unfriendly Chinese market. For royal fans starved of such cheapening, grisly sights, American Riviera Orchard is the shopping event of the ­century; a celebrity marketing moment bigger even than civilian Sylvester Stallone's tinned High Protein Puddings, Katy Perry launching her Corn Popchips range ('it's my dream snack') or the Duchess of York flogging ­cranberry juice and teapots on U.S. television back in the 1990s.

The labels state Meghan's jam has been 'sourced in Montecito' but listen jamsters, that could mean anything. Sourced from a factory, sourced from a farm, sourced from the bruised fruit bargain bins in the Montecito Tesco.

Was the jam grown, harvested and handpicked in a local ­strawberry patch? Did the ­duchess herself hull the berries, measure the sugar, check in the pectin and skim the scum? There is no detail — and ­vagueness in the provenance of perishable goods is never an encouraging sign. If Meghan were to sell the jams as opposed to ­forcing them upon strangers, the ­products would have to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is a whole ­different jam game.

Perhaps, we will learn more when the two new Netflix documentary series about the Sussexes are broadcast next year. In one, ­Meghan will share the 'joys of ­cooking, ­gardening, entertaining and ­friendship' — most of which she is demonstrably unqualified to do.

The second series finds Harry ­giving 'unprecedented access to the world of professional polo' — the ­exclusive, elitist sport few ­people care about outside polo circles.

Maybe the Sussexes could ­combine the two documentary strands and have Meghan making sandwiches for some thunderously handsome Argentinian polo ­players while writing encouraging words on their bananas, too. That would bring in the viewers.

Meanwhile, this ambitious pair of control freaks will be ­executively producing everything, from the polo shoots to the avocado-­potting sessions to the labels on the jars of strawberry delight; ­rolling out a carefully curated, highly sanitised, hugely commercialised version of their lives for public consumption and private profit.

Another day, another desperate Montecito dollar. This time with jam on it.

Princess Anne gave Paul Hollywood his MBE this week. Which just goes to show that there is no shame in public life anymore. You can, like Hollywood, suddenly up and leave your shocked wife, run off with your Mexican chef television co-star, then scandalously date a barmaid half your age — and still receive one of the highest honours in the land.

I say highest. While lots of very worthy people receive MBEs, it is still the first rung on the gong ladder. How interesting that Hollywood languishes down there on step one, while GBBO stalwarts Mary Berry and Prue Leith are both grand Dames. Arise Sir Paul of Soggy Bottom? It's not going to happen any time soon.

Emma Raducanu's win at the 2021 American Open now looks like a ­charming fluke, not a route path to Grand Slams

Emma Raducanu made £10 million last year despite not playing very good tennis — and not even playing it very often.

I don't blame Emma for this. Her riches have been harvested from the kind of financial ­temptations that have long-bedazzled and besmirched professional tennis.

Her win at the 2021 American Open now looks like a ­charming fluke, not a route path to Grand Slams — because Emma doesn't burn with a champion's desire to win.

She has precious little of the fire that consumes all sporting greats. Look at Sir Andy ­Murray, still boiling with ­ambition at the age of 36.

The three-time Grand Slam champion had hip-resurfacing surgery in 2019 and ruptured ankle ligaments at the Miami Open last month, but he hopes to be back at Wimbledon this year. He won Olympic gold in London 2012 and in Rio 2016 — now he says he wants to ­compete at another Games before he retires.

What pushes Andy ever onwards? Nothing but the sheer, bloody, all-consuming will to win. And that's something Emma will never understand.

Victoria Beckham has launched and run a successful fashion and make-up business while still maintaining a ripe sense of humour

Posh hits 50! How did that happen? 

Here is a fun fact to make you feel old — Victoria Beckham just turned 50.

What? It seems like ­yesterday when Posh was running around with the Spice Girls, her larrikin days as a pop star still vivid and freshly minted.

And in the intervening decades, she has survived and thrived while some of her bandmates have endured more than their share of abusive relationships, addictive behaviours and financial problems.

In contrast, Victoria has a happy marriage that has endured the storms of life and four children who seem to love being part of the family unit. On her ­Instagram this week, she said: 'I believe that you can be many things.

'A pop star, a mother, a wife, a designer . . .

'My passion has always been to dream big, then dream even bigger! Believe in yourself first — everyone else will follow.'

She has launched and run a successful fashion and make-up business while still maintaining a ripe sense of humour.

In 2015 she told Vogue magazine she gave up ­smiling 'in responsibility to the fashion community'.

Happy Birthday to an amazing woman — one who is certainly having the last laugh.

When snappers go out on a limb 

Memo to all photographers on red carpet duty. If a female star is wearing a gown split to the hip in a design tailored to show off her legs, do not imagine that is necessarily because she wants to show off her legs.

It is none of your business, even though showing a leg is what starlets have done since Mary Pickford first turned a nice ankle at the dawn of Hollywood. Yet Hannah ­Waddingham had a spiky altercation with a photographer who asked her to 'show a leg' when she was posing at the Olivier Awards.

'Oh my God, you'd never say that to a man, my friend,' she complained, although to be fair, a man wouldn't be wearing a diaphanous one-shouldered gown with a thigh-high split. Unless they were Sam Smith or Billy Porter, in which case the photographer probably would have made the same request.

Yet Hannah was furious. 'Have some ­manners,' she fumed, before stalking off.

The star later revealed the photographer sent her a note of apology. What a wimp!

Manners have improved since my interview with Victoria Wood in the 1980s. She was wearing trousers — how disobliging! — and the photographer asked if she could change into 'a nice skirt to show a bit of leg'. I still wonder if he extricated his camera from his body parts after she'd finished with him.

I wonder how Ms Rayner, above, feels about being ­patronised by her boss Sir Keir Starmer

Working-class women aren't defined by background, Keir 

The Angela Rayner council tax fraud allegations and possible electoral offences situation is difficult — those who pursue it look like ­bullies, while her ­evasions get greasier by the minute.

If she has made an honest mistake, why not just confess? Decent people across the political divide could and would forgive her.

Instead, she has become the football in a much bigger game, kicked about by those with vested interests.

And I wonder how she feels about being ­patronised by her boss Sir Keir Starmer.

'We've got a billionaire Prime Minister whose family has used schemes to avoid millions of pounds [of tax] smearing a working-class woman,' he bellowed at PMQs on Wednesday.

Is that what Angela is to him? A useful class cipher with which to attack the opposition?

How insulting. As a working-class woman myself — and on behalf of like-minded working-class women everywhere — I would like to tell Sir Keir that while we are proud of our background, it is not what defines us.

It is not where you come from in life that matters most — it is where you are going.

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