AMANDA PLATELL: I do know the unhappy and cynical fact about why Harry and Meghan’s supply over Los Angeles fires has gone up in flames

No sooner had the flames of the devastating fires in Californian begun destroying homes and lives than Meghan and Harry leapt to the rescue.

They took to social media revealing they’d opened the doors of their $29million nine-bedroom mansion to ‘friends and loved ones’.

‘A state of emergency has been issued’, the Sussexes said, adding: ‘If a friend, loved one or pets has [sic] to evacuate and you are able to offer them a safe haven in your home, then please do. And be sure to check in with any disabled or elderly neighbours to see if they need help evacuating.’

A magnanimous gesture to be applauded? Perhaps it is.

But the sad truth is many won’t see it that way. Because the Sussexes’s reputation means some people now regard their every public pronouncement with deep cynicism.

In the light of the way they have treated Meghan’s frail and elderly father, refusing to allow him to set foot in their mansion or even meet his two grandchildren, their plea for people to help loved ones and the elderly takes on a different complexion.

Given that this very public expression of compassion coincided with Meghan’s new Netflix cooking series ‘With Love, Meghan’ due out on January 15, and on which her future earnings depend, many will see this as a money-making publicity ploy.

Meghan and Harry’s offer to help those affected by the fires may be from the heart. But their lack of popularity following their trashing of Harry’s family while playing on their royal status, colours people’s judgment.

Which is why, for many, their oh-so generous gesture has already gone up in flames.

It can’t be true! Holly Willoughby has just bought an £8million mansion with no mortgage. But now HMRC has issued a winding-up petition against Roxy Media, the firm she co-founded with her husband. If her expression is frozen when she appears on Dancing On Ice 2025, that might explain it… 

Rochdale disgrace

Can there be any greater example of the impotence of our legal system than seeing the ringleader of Rochdale’s grooming gang Qari Abdul Rauf – jailed in 2012 for raping and trafficking girls and released after serving two and a half years of his six-year sentence – still living in Britain?

Astonishingly, he’s in the same city as his victims. This, despite assurances he’d be sent back to Pakistan after losing appeals against deportation in 2020 and 2022.

Sickening enough for us, but unbelievable hell for the families of the girls he raped.

Nicole kids ’em!

The director of Nicole Kidman’s new movie Babygirl – where she is a married, middle-aged executive who has a highly erotic affair with a much younger intern – claims it is a coming-of-age feminist film portraying the truth about women’s orgasms.

Nicole says during filming she had to fake great sex so many times she got orgasm fatigue.

Maybe that explains her enigmatic smile when she appeared at the Golden Globes.

Absolutely heartbreaking for Caroline Flack’s mother Christine that five years after her daughter’s suicide she is seeking answers on a Disney+ documentary about how it happened and who was to blame. 

The sad truth is no one is to blame when a person is lost in a despair so deep that they take their own life. I know. My granddad Pop ended his life jumping to his death. Even the love of his family couldn’t save him.

++ Westminster Wars ++ 

• Claiming it is ‘false and defamatory’, our shortest serving PM is trying to gag Keir Starmer from ever again saying ‘Liz Truss crashed the economy’. Good luck with that as all he has to say is Liz the Lettuce crashed the economy (the Economist magazine said she’d caused political turmoil after just seven days in power – the shelf life of a lettuce – and it became a standing joke). Or is that libellous to lettuces?

• Starmer’s big idea to ‘hit people smugglers where it hurts’ is to introduce financial sanctions and freeze their bank accounts. What naivety! As if criminals – who operate across the world and whose trade smuggling migrants over the Channel was worth more than 150million euros last year alone – have their millions stashed in a High Street bank.

Having watched Demi Moore in The Substance, for which she won best actress at the Globes, I’m convinced the judges were having a laugh. She takes a drug to create a youthful version of herself.

In her nude scenes writhing around as the drug takes effect, we’re reminded of Demi’s own success in appearing beautifully ageless at 62. Women would kill for the name of her plastic surgeon – if she has one!

Good news for my moggie Ted, known as Teddy when he’s behaving, that experts say it’s best for cats’ wellbeing to have a one or two syllable name. I’d say it’s preferable to keep it to just one, like Ted and his predecessors Jim, Ron and Reg. All can be expanded to the more affectionate term when they’re not ripping up the sofa.

All you need is… The Beatles 

A survey of moments we’d most have wanted to witness is topped by England’s 1966 World Cup win, followed by seeing The Beatles between 1963-66. It’s The Beatles for me, although I’d have been six to nine years old and living in Oz when our family would come together and twist and shout watching them on TV.

• All five living US Presidents attended the funeral of ex President Jimmy Carter – Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump – with their wives, except Michelle Obama. She was on holiday in Hawaii. Was it because she’d have to sit next to Trump? Whatever. It was insulting to the Carter family. The sanctimoniously caring Left can be cruel when it suits them.

• Meanwhile Melania Trump will pocket a chunk of a $40 million deal with Amazon for a documentary about her. If she talks about why she stood by her husband after his affair with Stormy Daniels, it would be worth millions in viewers alone.

Last Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of Megxit. At the time many commentators gleefully predicted it the end of the Royal Family. Five years later the monarchy is, to use Meghan’s words, not just surviving but thriving, while the Sussexes’ popularity here and all over the world is diving. 

Hammond ignored warning signs

Top Gear’s Richard Hammond and Mindy, his wife of 23 years, have separated.

Friends say she kicked him out and he’s been living in a converted barn on their £7million estate which she wants to keep in the divorce settlement.

Who can blame her? He suffered a near-death crash in 2006. She nursed him back to recovery and through depression, pleading with him not to risk his life again.

Yet in 2017 he had another high-speed crash and just managed to escape the car before it burst into flames.

Sad for them and their two daughters that he put his macho petrol-head ego before his family –but she did warn him.