Has Omid Scobie turn out to be much more regal than Harry and Meghan?

Omid Scobie: there can’t be many individuals at the moment who’ve by no means heard of the royal creator or didn’t have seen his face within the papers or on TV.

He has been talked about greater than 8,500 occasions in press articles on this facet of the pond alone over the previous few years, usually described as Harry and Meghan’s cheerleader-in-chief, one thing he denies.

‘Spin-free’ and neutral is how he describes his fawning 2020 bestselling biography of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Finding Freedom, which he co-wrote with fellow journalist Carolyn Durand. He was not being ironic.

Either means, one factor nobody might accuse Scobie of, within the wake of his new-found fame, is failing to embrace the movie star life.

Only this week, on the eve of the publication of his new ebook Endgame (subtitled ‘Inside the Royal Family and the monarchy’s battle for survival’), he has posted an image from the window of what seems to be an opulent property in Los Angeles. It exhibits rain pattering onto the crystal-blue water of a sizeable swimming pool. The caption reads: ‘Did not sign up for this.’

Yes, Omid. Even in California, the ‘Sunshine State’, it rains in November.

The U.S. has turn out to be a house from residence for Scobie, the place he has frequently appeared on Good Morning America, been a contributor to ABC News and the place his newest royal potboiler is being serialised in People journal.

Photographs on his social media accounts depict him embracing the lifetime of an LA prince, visiting the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills and Nobu in Malibu, two of the realm’s costliest eating places. Both are movie star hangouts and fewer than two hours’ drive from Harry and Meghan’s Montecito mansion.

He has additionally shared pictures of himself in France: in Chamonix (he has a penchant for Chanel skis, apparently) and holidaying on the five-star Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Cap d’Antibes on the Riviera (‘I live here now’ he joked on a video shot from the lodge’s spectacular saltwater infinity pool).

Then there’s purchasing for designer garments and equipment (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, to call a number of manufacturers in his wardrobe) along with his beloved French bulldog, Yoshi.

Scobie as soon as turned up for a rendezvous with Tatler with Yoshi by his facet. The pooch, named after a Super Mario character, was ‘lapping up water from a bowl his master produced from a Burberry man bag,’ to cite the interviewer, who noticed that Scobie was sporting high-end jewelry objects, together with a hoop by luxurious Hollywood model Chrome Hearts, whereas ingesting espresso with almond milk.

Of course he was.

In one other photoshoot, accompanying {a magazine} article, Scobie may be seen posing aristocratically in a gold smoking jacket.

How a lot has he made since he started writing about Harry and Meghan? Some estimates put it at round $800,000 (simply over £660,000) – and that’s earlier than Endgame, billed as ‘exposing the chaos, family dysfunction, distrust and draconian practices’ contained in the Royal Family, goes on sale subsequent week.

Kinsey Schofield, an American blogger and podcaster concerning the Royal Family, met Scobie within the inexperienced room of a TV studio once they have been each commentating on a royal occasion final yr.

‘I’d describe him as huge for his britches, very impressed with himself,’ she recalled. ‘He didn’t have interaction with me as a fellow commentator, which you suppose somebody would possibly do in a piece scenario.

‘He has an over-abundance of confidence — it’s inauthentic. He’s acquired some issues improper.’

We actually didn’t get the entire reality in Finding Freedom.

Harry and Meghan persistently denied co-operating with the authors. Meghan was later pressured to confess within the High Court privateness declare in opposition to Associated Newspapers that she had certainly authorised an aide to temporary the authors and later apologised for deceptive the courtroom, insisting she ‘had not remembered’ the e-mail alternate.

Similar suspicions, rightly or wrongly, encompass Endgame.

Exactly what supposedly occurred on or round September 8, 2022, the day Queen Elizabeth handed away at Balmoral, is chronicled within the ebook.

Harry, it’s alleged, was not knowledgeable of his grandmother’s speedy decline or the actual fact the Palace was already making preparations for the Queen’s last hours — ‘until his phone started ringing’, writes Scobie. ‘An unknown number. He usually ignored those.’

Harry answered the decision after being persuaded by Meghan. On the road was his father telling him to make his solution to Scotland instantly.

It’s arduous, aside from the apparent, to see the place this info might have come from, isn’t it.

The subsequent factor Harry did, in keeping with Scobie, was to ship a textual content message to his brother ‘asking how he and Kate planned to get to Scotland and whether they could travel together. No response.’

Would any of Harry and Meghan’s circle, if that they had been aware of that revelation, have spoken to Scobie with out the couple’s permission?

In the top, they chartered a airplane to Scotland from Luton airport.

This week Scobie tweeted: ‘And let’s get this nonsense out the best way —#ENDGAME is concerning the present state of the British Royal Family. It’s not “Harry and Meghan’s book”, I’m not “Meg’s pal”, the Sussexes don’t have anything to do with it, their story is a small a part of a a lot larger one you possibly can learn in 12 days.’

The Sussexes, too, have distanced themselves from the ebook.

Scobie has undergone fairly a change down the years, not simply professionally — the person feted by society bible Tatler and who’s now royal editor-at-large for Harper’s Bazaar, used to run a seedy Korean web site, of which extra later — however bodily as properly. His look modified dramatically after he returned from a visit to the Far East a decade or so in the past, in keeping with somebody who knew him again then.

You solely have to have a look at pictures of him, pre-Harry and Meghan, to maybe grasp why. ‘He just looks totally different,’ stated the particular person, who encountered him professionally.

All this, plus with the revelation that he knocked 5 years off his age, saying he was 33 when he was actually 38, in an interview with the Times in 2020, culminated in a latest headline: ‘Who is Omid Scobie?’

Many individuals suppose that, due to his sturdy U.S. hyperlinks, he’s American. Actually, Scobie was born in Wales however introduced up in Oxford, the place he was a pupil on the prestigious fee-paying Magdalen College School, then, within the sixth kind, he moved to Cherwell, a state secondary.

He is the eldest of two brothers, his Scottish father arrange his personal advertising and marketing enterprise and his Persian mom is a social employee. Scobie himself makes use of the phrase ‘Persian’ somewhat than ‘Iranian’ as a result of, he says, ‘to Persians there’s a giant distinction. My mum’s facet of the household will not be Muslim and has no connection to the Islamic Republic of Iran.’

His first job, after graduating from the London College of Communication, was as a showbusiness reporter for movie star gossip journal Heat, which can shock some given what critics would possibly name his lofty angle to the favored press.

One of the ‘contacts’ he cultivated was glamour mannequin Jodie Marsh, peroxide blonde, former lapdancer and Essex Wives star, whom he accompanied to nightclubs. It was even rumoured they have been relationship.

Jodie made the entrance pages of the red-tops when she hit the city within the skimpiest of micro-minis and a few studded camouflage belts (barely) overlaying her decolletage.

‘She is a down-to-earth, sweet girl with a big circle of friends around her and no bad influences,’ Scobie wrote of her.

He left Heat as a result of, he says, an govt referred to as him a ‘P***’ in emails. Scobie would spend the following decade at U.S. Weekly, the place he turned their European bureau chief, which concerned reporting extensively on the Royal Family.

It is this era, particularly, which leaves Omid Scobie open to accusations of hypocrisy.

‘What gets my back up is that he acts like St Omid,’ stated a colleague from these days who has adopted his profession with no little disbelief.

‘It was part of his job working for the Americans to send paparazzi photographers out after celebrities and royals in the UK. It was Kate and William rather than the old royals they were interested in so, ironically, Omid would cover all their appearances and write happy, shiny positive pieces about them.’

Contrast that with the portrayal of the now Prince and Princess of Wales in Finding Freedom, drawn, it’s claimed, from greater than 100 sources. This included allegations that they by no means visited Harry and Meghan at their Cotswolds residence, that William informed his brother ‘to get to know this girl’ earlier than he married her, and that Kate didn’t attempt to assist repair their relationship or try any significant friendship with Meghan.

Finding Freedom topped bestseller lists in each Britain and the U.S.

Scobie used to get pleasure from a very good relationship with fellow journalists on the royal beat, becoming a member of the press pack on excursions overseas, and even promoting them a few of his ‘spare stories’.

‘He was always nicely spoken and well-dressed,’ stated his former colleague. ‘I think he did see himself as a cut above but had no problem mixing with tabloid royal reporters.’ He earned sufficient overlaying the royals for the U.S. media to afford an condo in one among Canary Wharf’s most unique complexes and drive a Porsche.

Scobie additionally had a secret weapon, it turned out, which emerged on William and Kate’s tour of Canada in 2011.

‘He boasted about the fact that he could lip-read so he could work out what they were saying,’ revealed a royal reporter who was on the identical journey.

Could this be the identical Omid Scobie who has now reinvented himself as a crusader in opposition to press intrusion? What his fellow royal reporters didn’t know was that Scobie had a sideline: operating a Korean leisure information web site IdolWow! to money in on the South Korean pop — or Okay-pop as it’s recognized — world phenomenon.

One article on the platform in 2015 carried a ‘review’ of a video that featured a singer wearing bra and hotpants on stage with an entourage of fashions, six in all, kneeling at her ft – collared, leashed and sporting pink bondage masks.

The article identified, in salacious element, how the video is ‘littered with close-up crotch shots in barely-there hot pants that show off the 23-year-old’s lady group star’s bootylicious curves … at one level the brunette idol even squeezes her breasts collectively on the digital camera’.

The web site, which is now defunct, additionally highlights a star from one other group in her ‘tight bikini that flaunts her ample cleavage and supremely busty curves’.

It somewhat conflicts with Meghan’s feminist credentials, which Scobie has written enthusiastically about up to now. He has additionally posted hyperlinks on social media to articles about sexism.

Scobie reportedly first met Meghan at Toronto Fashion Week in the identical yr (2015) as his IdolWow! web site carried that distasteful evaluate.

She had not begun relationship Harry on the time, at the very least not publicly, so he didn’t realise the importance of the encounter, he has since stated. That all modified, as everybody now is aware of.

He later wrote a now well-known account of the Sussexes’ last engagement as working royals in 2020 when Meghan gave him ‘a big farewell hug’ beneath the ‘malachite candelabras’ of the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace.

A royal correspondent I spoke to confirms Scobie was invited to the Palace as a journalist. He was there to cowl the operate in an expert capability, says the extremely revered journalist who has lined the Royal Family for a few years.

Why Scobie? It was as a result of they trusted him, the correspondent stated. Anyone who has learn Finding Freedom, extensively acknowledged to be a one-sided narrative of Harry and Meghan’s fallout with ‘The Firm’, will likely be in little doubt in any respect that Scobie could possibly be trusted.

He supported their privateness lawsuit in opposition to The Mail on Sunday and lately appeared within the High Court as witness for Prince Harry’s phone-hacking declare in opposition to the writer of the Daily Mirror.

The identical loyalty, little doubt, will likely be evident in Omid Scobie’s newest chapter within the royal saga, which hits the bookshelves in a number of days.

Additional reporting: Tim Stewart