Harry and Meghan turned me into a royalist – with help from Netflix

I have never been a big fan of the royals. As a little girl I adored Diana’s beauty, drama and good deeds, but the rest of them seemed boring and fusty.

All that changed last week when the Thomas Markle show came to town. The unfurling soap opera of staged pap snaps, the flip-flops on whether he would walk his daughter down the aisle, an announcement of sudden heart surgery in Mexico and Meghan’s oddly worded statement from Kensington Palace left me gripped. Not since the days of Diana has there been such drama in the house of Windsor.

It appeared to be a terrible PR crisis. Yet, by Saturday, the headlines had managed to make Meghan, a Hollywood actress, wonderfully relatable.

We all have a rogue relative who can be relied upon to say and do the worst thing at the worst possible moment.

The Windsors have their fair share but poor Meghan seems to have a family full of them. Only lovely Doria, resplendent in Oscar De La Renta, locs and a nose stud, stuck by her daughter’s side.

When Meghan appeared on the west steps of St George’s Chapel in her Givenchy finery, I was rooting for her, for them, for the whole barmy institution.

And what a wedding! With Bishop Curry’s energetic sermon and that spine-tingling rendition of Stand By Me, it was a wedding full of hope for modern Britain.

But I don’t think Harry and Meghan can take total responsibility for the rising royalist fervour.

Netflix series The Crown laid the foundations. The addictive, über-expensive show turned royal history into a high-quality soap opera about ambition, passion, betrayal and the sacrifices the crown demands.

As I watched the prince and his Hollywood divorcee wife tie the knot, it occurred to me: this is going to be a cracker of an episode one day.

Divorce law needs a fresh start

Sticking with the wedding theme, let’s talk divorce. It is more straightforward to get divorced in Russia, China and India than it is in England, new research says. UK family law is labyrinthine and the process is expensive.

My mother once told me: “Divorce is what happens when you decide you don’t care how much it costs, you want this person out of your life.”

I always thought that was that, but one case has made me wonder whether divorce should be easier.

Tini Owens, 68, has gone to the Supreme Court to ask judges to grant her a divorce from her 80-year-old husband Hugh.

This comes after he contested her petition for divorce — something that happens in just one per cent of divorces.

She says that she is “locked in” to a marriage that makes her feel “unloved, isolated and alone”. Hugh says they still have a “few years” to enjoy together.

Such mismatched expectations are heartbreaking. Maybe divorce law is due an overhaul.

An excess of exes

The tradition of inviting ex-partners to royal weddings will always make me boggle with disbelief.

Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas trooped into St George’s Chapel alongside celebrity guests Idris Elba and Serena Williams on Saturday. Prince William invited Jecca Craig and Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe to his nuptials in 2011 and Camilla Parker Bowles was perched on a pew as Diana walked down the aisle at St Paul’s Cathedral back in 1982.

I’m sure yoga-loving Meghan was far too zen to be bothered by the attendance of Harry’s ex of seven years, Davy, but I still think this is one tradition we can afford to let go of. It’s just… weird.

Why the delay over all our railcards?

Six months ago the Chancellor announced, to much fanfare, there would be a new railcard for 26- to 30-year-olds offering a third off rail fares. So far, only 10,000 of the 4.5 million young-ish people eligible for the so-called millennial railcards have been able to get one.

As I am 30 in two weeks, gulp, I would dearly like to know when these railcards will be available.

I have tried to sign up to the scheme but all I can find is a confusing statement explaining that the trial run has now sold out.

That’s not much help to those of us about to be aged out of this offer, facing full fares until we turn 60 and qualify for the senior railcard.