ANYONE who has known the horror of turning up at a fancy occasion to find someone wearing the same outfit will have sympathised with Meghan Markle on her trip to Scotland this week. In her case, though, it was ten times worse. No, make that 100.
The royal bride-to-be’s fashion competitor was not a fellow guest but a Shetland pony by the name of Cruachan. I mean, come on, what are the chances of a couture clash with a 28-inch-plus bundle of cuteness on four legs? Give a woman a break. 
But there was Cruachan, wearing a Black Watch-style coat almost identical, tartan-wise, to the £1995 Burberry number sported by Prince Harry’s fiancee. I would like to think that royal aides will avoid such disgraceful faux pas in future. (“Allegra, check what Kate is wearing. Minty, run an eye over any attending wildlife. Especially the regimental goat. I swear that last one wore Viv Westwood just to spite me.”)
Fashion police aside, few were bothered. It was that sort of day as the young couple spent the day in Edinburgh, where their engagements included dropping in at the Social Bite charity cafe and later on meeting Scotland’s First Minister. The main focus of the coverage was Cruachan’s attempt to take a lump out of Harry’s hand. (To be fair to the pony, the prince approached him with an open mitt, which is international horse language for “Here’s a Polo mint, mate.”
It was a refreshing change from most of the coverage of Prince Harry’s fiancee of late. Some of this has made one feel like a guest at another occasion – Sleeping Beauty’s christening. You will recall the tale: good fairies bestow gifts such as wit and goodness. All is well until a fairy from the wrong side of the tracks places a curse on the infant. The malediction in Miss Markle’s case has been comparisons to Diana, the woman who would have been her mother-in-law.
“Is this the hug that shows Meghan is ready to be the new People’s Princess?” asked a headline above a photo of Miss Markle embracing someone. “Meghan Markle spreads her wings in ways reminiscent of Diana,” said NBC news atop a story noting her “private” visits to a mosque near Grenfell Tower to meet the grieving. Elsewhere, Diana’s habit of leaving the palace after midnight on clandestine trips to homeless shelters and hospital wards was noted. Business Insider remarked upon other similarities between the two women, including their ability to send sales of whatever they were wearing (or toting in the case of  Scots handbag firm Strathberry) into the stratosphere.
Sometimes the suggestion is not so obvious, as when Ann Widdecombe, a former government Minister no less, though at the time of speaking a resident of the Celebrity Big Brother house, said of former actor Miss Markle: “I think she’s trouble. Background, attitude... I worry. I add it all up and I’m uneasy but there we go.”
The only good thing about such coverage is that it has at least halted comparisons to Wallis Simpson, the last American divorcee to get within a handbag’s throw of the throne. Some tried their best (or worst) to make a connection, but the distance between old ice-in-her-veins Wallis and a refreshingly warm and friendly young woman was a stretch too far even for columnists, famously double-jointed as we are. So, Diana it is.
Where does one begin to take issue with that? First, it is in very poor taste, not to mention lazy. Second, given that the lives of the two women are as different as they are similar, it is inaccurate. Miss Markle had a career and supported herself, for example. Diana was just 20 when she married her royal; Miss Markle is 36. Third, comparing the two women is outrageously sexist, typical of a way of thinking that one had hoped had gone the way of flared trousers, mullets, and the three day week. To such narrow minds, women are if not all the same then at least easy to pigeonhole. Thus robbed of their individuality, they are easier to dismiss.
The same process is just as unfair when it is applied to men, people from poor backgrounds, people of colour, disabled people, and so on. It is what the powerful have always done: put others in boxes the better to keep them there. Stick a label over their mouths; that will keep them quiet. Don’t encourage them to think things can ever change.
Good luck to Miss Markle in challenging such nonsense and the many assumptions being made about her. Let her enjoy her own victories, make her own mistakes. In short, have her own life. Back off bad fairies, your work here is done.

PERHAPS it is having so many new things to keep us awake at night, but it has been hard to get too excited over claims about what Jeremy Corbyn did or did not do during the Cold War.
According to The Sun, he met a Czech spy. According to Labour, the fellow was a diplomat. Any suggestion that the Labour leader was “an agent, asset or informer for any intelligence agency”, added a party spokesman, was “entirely false and a ridiculous smear”.
The notion of Mr Corbyn being a secret anything seems bizarre, given how much of his 35-year career as an MP has been carried on in public. As coverage during the last General Election showed, if he wanted to avoid controversial meetings and bad headlines he made an extremely poor job of it. Definitely more Rowan Atkinson’s Johnny English than James Bond.
What the Corbyn story does show is that interest in the Cold War era is as intense as ever. If nothing else there is a sense that things were simpler then. But as any le Carre fan can attest, heaven help us if those turn out to be the good old days.

LOVED those pictures of a golden retriever behind the wheel of a Reliant Kitten at at petrol station in Falkirk.
“The owner got out and the dog jumped in the front seat and waited patiently for him coming back,” said a witness. “When his owner came back he hopped right back to the passenger side. It was adorable.”
Before we go any further, I should say that all animals, and humans for that matter, should be secured in a moving vehicle. In the case of the unnamed retriever the car was parked and the ignition off.
Which reminds me of one of my old ladies, then a puppy, whose party piece at petrol stations was to lean over and chew the handbrake. While this made her wildly unpopular with me (for about, oh, a nanosecond), I was the toast of the garage that made a fortune replacing said gnarled handbrakes. The repair happened so often it became known as “doing a Midge”.
Still, she could have let the handbrake off, started the car and driven off into the sunset without me. That would have been far worse than a chewed handbrake any day.