There are certain moments, certain weeks, where I spy a theme among royal storylines. This week’s theme is: Prince Harry is the odd man out, everyone connected to the royal family hates Harry now, and Harry is presumably jealous of his brother for having good relationships with all of Harry’s old mates. Granted, that’s been a royal storyline for years, but it’s gotten new life this week because Peter Phillips apparently made a point of NOT inviting Harry to his wedding. There’s another story (which I’ll cover separately) about William watching football with all of Harry’s “old friends.” And now this: Mike Tindall mentioning on his rugby podcast that he used to know Harry “when he was fun.”

Mike Tindall has joked that he knew Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex “when he was fun”. The former rugby player made the comment as he talked at the Hay Festival about his wedding to Zara Phillips, daughter of the Princess Royal, in 2011.

Tindall was speaking at the literature and arts festival in Powys with James Haskell and Alex Payne, his co-hosts on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast. He expressed mock surprise that Haskell had not made an idiot of himself at the wedding, and joked: “A lot of other people managed that way better than you – [like] Harry, when he was fun.”

The Duke of Sussex is godfather to the Tindalls’ second daughter, Lena, but the friendship is reported to have cooled since the Sussexes moved to Montecito, California.

At the Hay session, which recreated the banter familiar to fans of the podcast, Tindall also made jokes about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. When Payne mentioned that Tindall was well-connected, thanks to his rugby credentials and the fact that “he’s got his own bedroom at Buckingham Palace”, Mr Tindall replied: “Opposite end to Andrew, though.”

He hinted that he may get in trouble for mentioning the disgraced former Duke of York, saying: “Backstage, they were like, ‘It’s being recorded, maybe stay away from [the subject of] Andrew tonight?’”

There were more gags about Mr Tindall’s royal connections. The former England centre had corrective rhinoplasty for his broken nose in 2018, and Haskell quipped: “Taxpayers’ money fixed it. It’s got the royal warrant if you look inside it.”

[From The Telegraph]

It’s not some brutal swipe or anything. It’s actually a reminder that the family expected Harry to play the clown forever, that Harry was never supposed to become a mature man who found love and got married and started his own family. Harry was supposed to be “the fun one,” the scamp, the jokester forever. Remember in 2023 & 2024 when Mike was seemingly auditioning to become the “new Harry,” and the British press kept going on and on about how Mike and Peter Phillips were William’s “surrogate brothers” and Mike was “the brother Prince William needs.” They’ll never be able to fill the Harry-shaped hole in the monarchy.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.