Prince Harry penis stories return him to clown persona he tried to lose

Prince Harry’s frostbitten penis has become one of the biggest viral moments of his U.K. book release and tour—even after interviews sought to focus attention on more serious aspects of his royal story.

The Duke of Sussex talks extensively about his crown jewels in the book and did not shy away from answering questions on the subject during an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

However, discussion of his private parts appears to have overshadowed other aspects of the book, which told an at-times heartbreaking story of his grief at losing his mother, Princess Diana, and his feelings of betrayal over alleged leaks to the media by family members including Queen Camilla.

The section that appears to have gone repeatedly viral and spawned numerous parodies is a clip from the audio book, narrated by Harry, in which he describes applying Princess Diana’s preferred Elizabeth Arden cream “down there,” even as the memory of his mother flooded back.

The end result appears to be that, after years spent rebranding himself as a serious figure with an important message about the fight against racism, Harry now finds himself ridiculed in America for extracts of a book that was supposed to replace the palace narrative with his own.

Daily Express royal correspondent Richard Palmer, a member of the royal rota system that Harry has condemned, summed up the argument on Twitter: “Prince Harry’s decision to write a memoir has been a commercial success, provoked controversy around the world, and further alienated him from many Britons.

“But could it be that the lasting legacy of this project is that it turned him into an international laughing stock?”

Elizabeth Arden Cream and Prince Harry’s Book Legacy

Spare reads: “My penis was oscillating between extremely sensitive and borderline traumatized. The last place I wanted to be was Frostnipistan.”

After the 2011 trek across the North Pole, Harry describes how a friend recommended him Elizabeth Arden cream, but he was reluctant because “my mum used that on her lips.”

Harry wrote: “I found a tube, and the minute I opened it, the smell transported me through time. I felt as if my mother was right there in the room. Then I took a smidge and applied it…down there.”

The clip has done the rounds on both Twitter and TikTok and has been mocked by the likes of talkshow hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, who described Harry’s 60 Minutes interview as “fire and ice.”

It also triggered a wave of internet parodies, including some viewed by millions of people and not all of which are fit for publication by a respectable outlet such as Newsweek.

Edward Coram James, chief executive of PR agency Go Up, told Newsweek: “I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know who is more to blame him or his ghost writer. At some point, someone surely turned around to him and said, ‘Harry, you can’t be talking about remembering your mother’s smell at the same time as you’re talking about your genitals.’

“It’s completely unnecessary detail. It is very uncomfortable and creates an unnecessarily unsettling image of him. It makes you think, ‘What are you doing?’

“This guy will be paying a lot of money for the best advice out there, and I’m absolutely convinced at this point that it’s not that he isn’t getting good advice. It’s that he’s just not listening to it,” he added.

Prince Harry the Court Jester

Prior to quitting royal life, Prince Harry was one of Britain’s best-loved public figures, with up to 81 percent of the country viewing him positively, according to YouGov data from November 2017, the month he got engaged to Meghan.

That affection was built in part on years in which he not only worked for good causes but also occasionally got into trouble, including famously when playing strip billiards in Las Vegas.

As Judith Woods, a U.K. Daily Telegraph newspaper columnist, noted in 2017: “With every blunder and ill-advised outburst (saying “a***” live on [BBC] Radio 2) we warm to you with a soppy indulgence we frankly wouldn’t be caught displaying to our own flesh and blood.

“In an age of trolling and public shame-fests, it is as if you alone walk through the fires of social media unscathed. Even Mumsnet, the last bastion of purse-lipped matronly disapproval, thinks you are (whisper it) pretty cool.”

Those words appear a world away now, after years in which Prince Harry has accused the U.K. press of a vicious campaign against him and Meghan Markle. Post-Spare, around two-thirds of British adults now dislike Harry and Meghan.

The prince has not entirely lost his cheeky side, and he told Hoda Kotb in an April 2022 Today interview: “I’ll always try and keep that I think. The cheekiness is something that keeps you alive. There’s so much to be happy about in the outside world, but there is also so much to worry about.”

However, Harry and Meghan spent the years after they quit royal duties positioning themselves on the front line of social justice, fighting for a better world.

Prince Harry’s Rebrand and a Culture War Over ‘Woke’

Harry and Meghan provoked frequent condemnation from right-wing commentators, both in Britain and America, who accused them of lecturing or preaching while performing some form of hypocrisy.

Columnist Jan Moir, for example, wrote in the U.K. newspaper Daily Mail in 2020: “Check your privilege, Harry, before lecturing us on ‘unconscious bias’ from your McMansion.”

The conflict covered everything from preaching about the environment while flying private jets, to their stance on “unconscious bias” and comments about the 2020 U.S. election.

In December, Piers Morgan tweeted about the couple‘s Netflix documentary: “Imagine bleating about privacy then doing a kiss-and-tell reality series about your private lives?

“Then imagine preaching compassion as you trash your family again?

“Then imagine releasing 1st trailer deliberately to ruin your brother’s big trip to America? Repulsive hypocrites.”

Harry took significant criticism from the media but successfully repositioned himself as a serious figure with a contribution to make on some of the most high-profile debates taking place in America and on an international stage.

Prince Harry’s Publicity Around ‘Spare’

Early publicity for the book appeared to create a serious framing, with Harry’s first U.S. interview going to 60 Minutes.

Anderson Cooper asked Harry, “Why reveal conversations you’ve had with your father or with your brother?” to which the prince replied: “Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately, there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife.”

Harry added: “So, now, trying to speak a language that perhaps they understand, I will sit here and speak truth to you with the words that come out of my mouth, rather than using someone else, an unnamed source, to feed in lies or a narrative to a tabloid media that literally radicalizes its readers to then potentially cause harm to my family, my wife, my kids.”

In other words, everything in the conscious framing created by the publicity campaign appears to point towards the desire for a serious take on Harry’s life and his struggles with his family.

Yet, at least one of the biggest takeaways, if not the biggest takeaway, now appears to be a story in which many appear to be laughing at Harry rather than with him.

As time passes, detail fades from the public imagination, meaning often only one or two major aspects of a project, whether an interview or a book, survive in the hyperreal world of human memory.

With Princess Diana’s 1995 tell-all BBC interview on British television, it was her words: “There were three of us in this marriage so it was a bit crowded.”

After King Charles III and Diana’s engagement interview, it was his response to a question about their love with the words: “Whatever in love means.”

From the 1990s, public unravelling of their marriage, known as the War of the Waleses, it was the humiliating leak of a private phone call between Charles and Queen Camilla in which the now-king suggested he would like to be reincarnated as her tampon.

The big take home from the couple’s 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview was Meghan Markle’s allegation that an unnamed royal family member expressed “concern” about how dark her unborn child’s skin might be before he was born. The account gave rise to an international debate about the royal family and racism, though Harry now says the allegation of the latter was a creation of the British media.

Harry complicated public perception of that message by saying in interviews with ITV in the U.K. and 60 Minutes that it was not an allegation of racism but rather of unconscious bias, meaning the public may, in 10 or 20 years’ time, struggle to recollect exactly what it was the couple did accuse the family of and what the correct framing would be.

Now, the highly detailed and deeply personal account in Spare appears to have a very clear and very simple vignette that has shone more brightly than every other revelation among its 416 pages.

And it might just be that Harry’s book is remembered not as the continuation of Princess Diana’s war against the institution of monarchy and the men in the grey suits, but as his very own answer to Charles’ humiliating remarks about tampons.

Jack Royston is Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek’s The Royals Facebook page.

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