I AM no slouch when it comes to memoirs.
You could say I am a memoirologist, who has read nearly every celebrity journal, autobiography or diary published in the past 100 years, whether by Hollywood luminaries, playboys or politicians.
Prince Harry’s memoir Spare is full of revelations from losing his virginity in a field to taking illegal drugs
Petronella Wyatt has read many celeb memoirs and says few exceed Spare in tawdriness
The diaries of my own father, the late politician and News of the World columnist Woodrow Wyatt, were published posthumously in 2000.
Not all our friends were tickled.
Then there is my favourite, Errol Flynn’s My Wicked Wicked Ways.
But few have exceeded in tawdriness the memoir written by Harry.
Spare spares no one.
Between the cloudbursts of malice are flashes of a vulgarity so staggering it is hard to believe that anyone of relatively civilised feelings could have produced it, let alone a toff educated at Eton.
From Harry’s graphic descriptions of losing his virginity and enjoying illegal drugs to ruminations on his wife’s sex scenes in Suits, Spare is weirdly reminiscent of Hollywood pump jockey Scotty Bowers’ 2013 shocker Full Service: My Adventures In Hollywood And The Secret Sex Life Of The Stars.
Much of the information in Spare is not what I wish to be a party to.
Nor would I give the book as a present to a faint-hearted maiden aunt.
It is a study in vulgarity that not so long ago would have belonged in the bookshop section marked “Adult”.
I am neither a puritan nor a prude but what I did not expect from the Duke of Sussex was a book that could be up for 2023’s “Bad Sex Awards”.
Lines such as “She used me like a stallion” (Harry’s description of al fresco sex with an older woman outside a pub) would have made any self-respecting porn writer blush with shame and rethink his career.
To be fair, the Duke of Sussex employed a ghost writer, who, incidentally, would be mistaken to expect a dramatic rise in commissions.
But what many people think of as talent or wit in themselves is merely a certain hollow gaudiness and a desire for acclaim.
We know Harry’s desire for the latter has become almost involuntary.
But what sort of fame is he now seeking?
Oscar Wilde once said that books were neither moral or immoral; they were either well written or badly written, and that is all.
On that criteria alone, Spare is one of the worst books ever published.
It is also one of the most embarrassing and gives, wrongly or rightly, the impression of a life lived with grotesque futility; brawls, sex, drugs, boastful accounts of killing and a total lack of empathy.
The duke sets himself up as a role model to the young. He had better reconsider this role.
Spare is a breathtakingly sordid, trashy book in a genre packed with competition.
Spare could see Harry nominated in 2023’s ‘Bad Sex Awards’
Spare is released on Tuesday, January 10
