Кралски работи и клюки - октомври 2019

At the time, Meghan Markle was largely unknown outside the US, despite her starring role in the American TV drama Suits. Keen to make a name in Britain, her UK publicist had all but begged me – then a showbusiness journalist for a red-top newspaper – to meet the actress for a drink.

To be honest, I’d never heard of Meghan or Suits, but reluctantly agreed – even though I’d been rather looking forward to putting my feet up in front of the TV.

But here I was on a windswept November night in 2013 sharing a bottle of prosecco with Prince Harry’s future wife, both of us shivering beneath an outdoor heater. It soon became clear that Meghan was determined to raise her profile – even if it was with an inconsequential 80-word piece tagged on to the end of my weekly column.

We got on well, so much so that she canvassed my opinion on whether she should go on a date with the footballer Ashley Cole who was then, as now, not exactly a man blessed with ‘woke’ sensibilities. All in all, she seemed grateful that I was helping. We even hugged.

It was with this in mind that I watched her interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby last weekend. It might sound difficult to understand, she explained, but the forensic, unrelenting UK media attention came as a surprise. ‘I had no idea,’ she insisted.

She went on to tell Bradby that as an American she ‘very naively’ didn’t know about tabloids and ‘didn’t get it’.

Back in 2013 we met at the Sanctum Soho, a five-star hotel popular with celebrities. I was greeted at 8pm by a woman with long, dark brown, wavy hair, wrapped up in a smart, but not particularly expensive-looking black winter coat, dark jeans and a pair of stiletto boots. She introduced herself as Meghan. Recalling how I had ruined a pair of cherished gold shoes at my 30th birthday party at the same venue two years earlier, I warned Meghan about getting her heels caught between the decking.

During my years as a showbiz journalist, I’ve been inundated with requests from agents and publicists to meet their ‘new client’ – all too often a desperado determined to have their 15 minutes of fame. Such meetings are often tiresome.

But this client, Meghan, was not for giving up. In order to make that rooftop meeting happen, the persistent Mr Ransome contacted me several times, and, I later learned, had similarly pestered every other Fleet Street showbiz reporter. When I was obviously proving reluctant, he eventually resorted to getting a mutual friend, a former journalist turned publicist, to give me a nudge. She said we could go together, make a night of it and promised the prosecco would flow. Their determination – with or without Meghan’s encouragement – to get me to a meeting was obvious.

At the time, I was the Showbusiness Editor and columnist for the Sunday People, a newspaper whose circulation and status put me a fair way down the pecking order of British tabloid journalists with whom an American star might wish to ingratiate themselves. But Meghan betrayed no hint of feeling short-changed that night.

Clearly, networking was something at which she excelled.

Either she didn’t realise she was doing it or – more likely in my view – she had it down to a fine art.