Suzanne Harrington: The narrative of helpless man stolen by pushy woman is being wheeled out again
What do Yoko Ono, Meghan Markle and Nicola Peltz have in common? Apart from being: (a) minted; (b) female, and (c) married to past and present versions of British royalty?
Hint — it's to do with (c). First Yoko, then Meghan, now Nicola. Each has been accused of abducting their British spouse and trafficking them to the US, where they were/ are being held in diamond-encrusted captivity, 'controlled' by their conniving lady wives.
Not literally. Not like Jeffrey Epstein — more of an emotional trafficking, with each of the three hapless husbands going seven shades of Patty Hearst, professing love for their captors as the British tabloids continue to go through cycles of performative apoplexy with side bars of conjecture, 'insiders' and 'sources'.
Older readers will remember how Yoko broke up The Beatles, while the more contemporaneous recognise how Meghan Markle broke up the British royal family.
And now Nicola Peltz is breaking up Britain's other royal family, the Golden Spice Balls dynasty.
Nicola who? For those still stubbornly refusing to spend their lives online keeping up with the far grander lives of American billionaire heiresses, this column is here to fill in your blanks.
Nicola Peltz is married to Brooklyn Beckham, first born of David and Victoria. Brooklyn — named after the geographical location his mother first discovered she was pregnant with him (imagine if she'd been in Merthyr Tydfil) — is currently married to Ms Peltz and engaged in a 'feud' with Brand Beckham, conducted via cryptic Instagram posts and a marked absence from his dad's 50th birthday shenanigans. Beckham Jnr appears to have, as they say in Leytonstone, the right hump.
So how is this Beckham internecine situation the fault of his American billionaire heiress wife?
You may well ask. Just as Prince Harry, having married another wealthy American, had the right hump with the Windsors, British tabloids found it more convenient to blame Ms Markle for her husband's distancing himself from his family of origin.
This raised two questions — how dare Ms Markle fill Harry's head with Californian nonsense about being happy, and what kind of royal would choose Californian sunshine over a lifetime of unveiling statues in the rain and asking people if they'd come far.
Rather than accept that John Lennon no longer wanted to be a Beatle, or that Harry Windsor no longer wanted to be a prince, nor can the UK media get its head around how young Brooklyn, vendor of hot sauce, taker of blurry elephant photos, and poster baby of nepo, no longer wants to be a brand ambassador for the family firm. A bit of woman-blaming is therefore required.
Hence the acreage devoted to alleged antipathy between Ms Peltz and Mummy Beckham, because bitchfights make clickbait.
Meghan Markle had an entire palace media ecosystem to grapple with, while Yoko Ono endured the double whammy of being a woman and a foreigner who nicked a national treasure and spirited him away to New York and a life of radical creativity.
Obviously Brooklyn Beckham, with his terrible photos and daft tatts, is far from a Beatle or a prince — but that's not stopping the narrative of helpless man stolen by a pushy woman being wheeled out again.
Meanwhile, if you want to read about actual trafficking, follow the trials of Sean Combs or Andrew Tate.
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