How Cancer Changed King Charles’ Habit of a Lifetime

King Charles’ cancer means he now eats lunch

King Charles has long averred the absurd middle class custom of stopping in the middle of the day to consume food, a habit known to the rest of us as “lunch,” preferring to nibble on nuts and seeds he carries in his pockets and reportedly even shares with red squirrels on occasions.

Now, however, in yet another sign of the changes the king is being forced to make in wake of his cancer diagnosis, he has started to eat lunch for the first time, and The Mail on Sunday says his meal of choice is one of Meghan Markle’s favorite foods, an avocado.

Some keen students of royal history may recall that when Meghan’s love of the fruit became apparent, the Mail responded by running a story about how avocado farming was linked to illegal crime including people smuggling, extortion and murder.

Now that the king has been revealed as a fan, the Mail is focused more soberly on its nutritional benefits, with a source saying: “With some reluctance, he now has something to eat at lunchtime —a snack, really. He now eats half an avocado to sustain him through the day. It's important, particularly if you have got an illness.”

In other royal food news, Camilla’s son Tom Parker Bowles has a new book out about royal eating habit and has said that Camilla and Charles both like picking wild mushrooms—an activity Charles was pursuing at the moment that his mother Queen Elizabeth II passed away, saying that she and the king are “deeply competitive about their hauls.” And you thought royals weren’t supposed to cash in on their status, huh?

Meghan and Harry’s head of PR quits—but also stays

The last thing that Meghan Markle, fighting a narrative that she is “dictator in high heels” whose staff dislike working for her, needed this week was a story saying that a nineteenth staff member, her head of PR, was leaving the good ship Sussex and setting up her own outfit.

This was especially the case as Ashley Hansen, Meghan and Prince Harry’s global head of communications, was one of the leading voices in the piece in Us Weekly the previous week saying she was such a great boss she loved Hansen like her own child. Recollections of former staff contacted by The Daily Beast varied from Hansen’s somewhat.

Hansen said that when she asked for time off work for surgery, “I was met with the kind of concern and care a parent would express if it were their own child.”

She was sent flowers and care packages, “But most profoundly to me, Meghan would personally reach out to my husband daily to make sure that we both were OK and had support,” she adds. “It meant so much to him and even more to me. You don’t realize how much that kind of kindness and thought means until you need it.”

Despite such tender care, on Friday it was revealed that Hansen is setting up her own agency to offer bespoke brand management advice to high profile clients.

Heading off unworthy speculation that this might have anything at all to do with the in-office culture at Sussex Towers (and perhaps showing Hansen’s mastery of the dark arts of spin) Meghan was swift to say that she will be Hansen’s first client, adding: “My husband and I are excited to be alongside Ashley as she builds something extraordinarily special with her firm.”

Hansen said: “I am incredibly grateful to the Duke and Duchess for their continued trust in me.”

Some reports have said that Meghan will be an investor in Hansen’s new business, which cynics might say makes Hansen’s mellifluous praise of Meghan to Us Weekly all the more fathomable.

Hansen keeps her title as Meghan and Harry’s head of global comms.

Hal solo

Prince Harry has extended his solo trip abroad without Meghan, according to the Express.

The decision will raise eyebrows given there has been much focus on Harry and Meghan’s professional bifurcation in recent weeks; a sense added to when Meghan appeared on her own at a children’s hospital in LA this weekend.

The Mail adds more intrigue to the mix, saying that the idea for Harry to present himself to the world without his wife is his idea: “I hear he wanted it this way...I believe he wants space.”

Another source told the paper: “He’s always been desperate to be taken seriously and people I know say his fall from grace will really have got to him. It is a surprise that he went to Lesotho without Meghan. There may be a good reason she can’t leave the kids, but she’s never been to Lesotho and that surprises me, it is like a second home.”

The Express says Harry has added an extra few days to his trip to see friends in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Harry hacking case is a war of attrition

No, it’s not just you who feels Prince Harry’s hacking cases have been dragging on. Harry was told this week that his phone-hacking case against the News Group Newspapers (NGN), publisher of The Sun is consuming too much court time.

Mr Justice Fancourt said the dispute between the two sides was like a conflict between “two obdurate but well-resourced armies.”

On Friday, the judge wrote: “I have previously indicated to the parties that this individual claim... although it raises important issues, is starting to absorb more than an appropriate share of the court’s resources, contrary to the requirement in the overriding objective to deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost. It is now doing so.

“The claim at times resembles more an entrenched front in a campaign between two obdurate but well-resourced armies than a claim for misuse of private information. It is unsatisfactory to say the least that the court should be faced a second time with having to resolve such a large extent of disputed material on amendments to a statement of case.”

Another blockbuster full trial is due to be held at the High Court in January next year.

Diana thought Camilla was ‘loyal and discreet’

Princess Diana thought then-Camilla Parker Bowles was “loyal and discreet and deserved some form of recognition,” as her husband’s mistress.

Former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond claimed Diana told her this at one of their occasional private meetings, and before she told all in her 1995 Panorama interview in which she said there were “three of us” in her marriage.

Speaking at a News UK event in London, the Sun reports, Bond said of Diana: “She was complicated and confusing but I liked her a lot. She invited me to the Palace a couple of times for talks. We had long, long, long chats and she told me everything practically, almost everything in Panorama, before Panorama.

“She said, ‘There were three of us in this marriage’, and whether she had affairs and her view on Camilla. She told me she thought that Camilla was loyal and discreet and deserved some form of recognition.”

This week in royal history

Happy sixth wedding anniversary to Princess Eugenie, the younger child of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, who married Jack Brooksbank on Oct. 12, 2018. The couple have two sons, August and Ernest.

Unanswered questions

How is King Charles? Will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle successfully forge their own way, despite all the sneery reporting of their intentions?