Five months after their royal wedding at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle embarked on a 16-day tour of Australasia.
The newlyweds headed to Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand in October 2018, a tour which coincided with the Invictus Games, which were held in Sydney that year.
The royal couple’s trip was unforgettable for many reasons, including the announcement of Meghan’s pregnancy on the eve of their first day on tour.
For all the media accredited on the trip, however, there are a few stand-out moments that still remain in their memory – and they’re not all pleasant.
In the latest episode of A Right Royal Podcast, which you can listen to below, former royal correspondent and author Valentine Low relived a very awkward moment he and his other press colleagues had with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as they began their journey back to the UK after being apart from their families for over 16 days covering the royal tour.
Valentine told hosts Andrea Caamano, Emmy Griffiths and HELLO! royal editor Emily Nash: “We were flying from Tonga back to Sydney. And often on these tours, there comes a point towards the end, when the royal might come back to the back of the plane and have a chat with us off the record, you know, not for printing, but it's a way of making bonds. It's a way of keeping us sweet. It's a way of having informal contact. And we were promised that he or they would come to the back of the plane, and it didn't happen. It didn't happen and this was a four or five-hour flight, ‘When's this gonna happen?’”
He continued: “Then we were buckling up for the descent and we landed. And it hadn't happened. And only after we landed, they came back into the back of the plane. And Harry was slightly in front of Meghan, she was slightly behind him. And she didn't say much. She did make some strange remark about us wanting to get back for our Sunday lunch. And it was completely bizarre. But it’s what he said that was memorable. He said, ‘Thanks very much for coming, even though you weren't invited.’ And we thought, ‘What?’”
Valentine went on to add how he and other royal correspondents reacted as well as Prince Harry’s comment to his private secretary when he explained to him that his comment had been seen as “rude”.