Spare is half price at WHSmith

VICTORIA station is a bowl of misery at the best of times: passengers bled of their earnings by expensive season cards look anxiously at the departures boards in a senseless hope that there might actually be a train to the coast on time.

This it should be said is the scene even when there isn’t industrial action going on – and solidarity to those workers who deserve a pay rise this winter.

The cursed passengers nevertheless wander into WHSmith and puzzle over why chocolate bars are nearly £2 and a bottle of still water is double that. The ugly Christmas tree on the concourse last month had to be sponsored of course – by Haribo – and when it rains the platform 16 roof leaks water, with the chosen solution for some months being a bucket and some towels.

After dark the station only gets worse, full of party drunks pushing buckets of salty Wasabi noodles down their gobs or arguing with the staff behind the counter at Burger King.

I once saw somebody chunder their night’s intake all over the front counter of the old Upper Crust sandwich bar.

They had to stop selling their dried-out £6 baguettes for the rest of that evening.
Look the wrong way, however, and you’ll be asked why you’re so miserable – and that most irritating drunken request: to smile.

So you have to wonder what on earth possessed anybody who felt this would be the best place to be a minute into Tuesday morning.

Prince Harry’s book, Spare, had gone on sale at, yep, WHSmith, perhaps the most miserable shop in this miserable station with photographers there on the most miserable assignment of their careers: sent to snap anybody miserable enough to feel the need to buy a book that they could have simply bought in the daylight, just eight hours later.

This circus of an event is all part of the grand panto that the Duke of Sussex has laid on for us over the past few days.

He has repeatedly attacked the way the media works in this country, often with very valid points – even if his most eye-opening complaints may still be hidden away in private legal papers for possible court cases to come.

But Harry has shown how he also actually needs this world to hawk his memoir. Clickbait snippets are a boon.

And his TV studio tour has in fact exposed the counter side to Fleet Street’s dark arts – that being the dreaded softball approach.

ITV’s Tom Bradby, for example, had to explain how well he knew the Duke and for how long –  he was a guest at his wedding – before finding a serious face for his exclusive sitdown.

As it happens, I believe Harry has raised some important questions over how the monarchy operates and, deliberately or not, has opened a conversation over what form it should take in the future. The passing of the Queen should have been an opportunity for a calm conversation about what we all want from this institution – if we want it at all.

Instead, King Charles III took the throne and acted like we’d all been simply waiting for him to save us.

There are reports he is ordering a new gold carriage for his coronation.

That said, Harry hasn’t really been pressed by the interviewers he has selected to sit opposite – and he deserves to be if he wants to really be taken seriously.

It’s not an engaging interview if it is agreed beforehand that some things are off limits. Why did nobody, for example, ask him about the conduct of Prince Andrew?

Does the protection of his uncle not seem at odds to him, given how he says he feels he has been thrown under a bus by his own relatives?

He wasn’t really pressed on why he won’t give up his title either – despite leaving the firm so spectacularly.

Harry simply said: “What difference would it make?”

That’s no answer.

He still talks about his belief in the monarchy too, even through he claims that it has dealt with devilish forces.

No doubt those who buy his memoir – including those willing to sidestep the midnight soil slicks on the station floor at Victoria – will learn of a scarred soul who struggled, like anybody would, at losing his mother at 12.

There is a truth that will be hard to break to him in his fury at the tabloids, however. Many of those turning the pages of his book this week, complete with its colourful descriptions of his encounter with penile frostbite, will no doubt be among the same people who have drunk up every word that has been written about him for the past 38 years.

Could it be possible – just maybe – that some among the 400,000 people who dashed out to buy a copy on day one have also been among those who have helped create the endless demand for inane royal stories?

While he has understandable grievances towards some writers and the chasing paparazzi, the titles they worked for were providing what their audience had showed it wanted.

I find it completely unfathomable myself, but there is a stubbornly large audience out there that wants to know what Harry had for breakfast and what perfect mascara his wife uses.

No wonder his book, then, is selling so well.