Meghan Markle has become one of the 'great comic creations of our age' says Julie Burchill

As a child, one of my earliest memories is of my mother being cross with me because I refused to stand up at the end of a film - Born Free, appropriately, so I would have been seven - when they played the National Anthem, as was the habit of cinemas until 1974.

Already I was a rebel - and I found the monarchy, with the element of enthusiastic bowing, scraping and brown-nosing involved, particularly hard to stomach. I became ever more of a republican.

When I was 14, we were given the day off of school in order to watch Princess Anne’s wedding - I went shoplifting instead.

With the recruitment of Diana Spencer to The Firm, I like most of the nation was enchanted by this blushing teenager who had no ‘side’ to her, who had been the only girl in her family to refuse to ‘come out’ as a debutante and had worked as both a cleaner and a nanny despite coming from a wealthy and aristocratic family.

But the Windsors were too mired in privilege to appreciate the rare gift which gave their faded fol-de-rols a face-lift and treated her badly.

When Diana went rogue, revealing the steel beneath the satin which we’d first seen when she had the vow to ‘obey’ removed from her marriage ceremony, right up to her death and beyond, I now had two ways in which to loathe the monarchy; through the prism of class-war and of feminism. Jackpot!

It was, ironically, nostalgia for the Diana Effect which paved the way for Meghan Markle in her bid to be Princess of Hearts Mark II; her apparent warmth and informality seemed to echo our lost Princess. But an effect is all it was - a special effect, from a professional actress who liked to boast that she could cry on cue from one eye or both.

She was playing us as surely as she was playing the befuddled prince when she wore his mother’s favourite perfume on an early date. It worked, though; even I went gaga, writing such slush as ‘Meghan Markle has never waited soppily for some prince to rescue her. In fact, it seems far likelier that it is she who will rescue the prince.’ CRINGE! as the youngsters say - but thankfully, the ‘ick’ wasn’t far behind.

How do I loathe Meghan? Let me count the ways. The hypocrisy; lecturing the rest of us about climate change and using private jets like they’re cabs. The calculated cruelty in the last days of both the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen, bringing to mind bored children tormenting a dying, bound and defanged lion.

The pretence to ‘service’ while attention-seeking on a global scale - yeah, self-service. Because of this, I found myself a monarchist for the first time ever.

It’s not that I particularly like the King; if Diana could be brought back to life and installed instead, I’d be leading the charge. But we live in the real world, and because of their behaviour, I find myself on the side of the institution which this nasty pair seek to bring down. Or should that be ‘sought’?

When I coined the phrase ‘the Grabication’ I thought that Meghan would eventually settle for a few bangles and some voice-over work. I had no idea that what this grim pair were actually seeking was the destruction of the House of Windsor, ostensibly on the grounds of racism, but actually because this was the one chance two mediocre people would get to feel mighty.

But with their most prestigious – and lucrative - deals behind them, and Meghan reduced to pottering about making jam, that Sovereign Grant - remaining at £86.3 million for the third consecutive year - must look like something really risking putting your hand in the cookie jar for.

Meghan hasn’t been seen in this country since the Queen’s funeral in 2022; two years of grifting and attention-seeking, whereas nothing less than seismic cultural change was promised.

What next for this two-bit hustler with delusions of adequacy? No longer really a royal but abandoned by her old showbiz coterie - from Oprah to the Beckhams – and rejected by the new stars (Taylor Swift and her selfies with the Waleses) she is now little more than an amped-up, damped-down reality star, famous for being infamous.

The world has moved on; in a bitter twist of fate no one saw coming, the Big Beast that was the House of Windsor is now a wounded lion, with the serious illnesses of both the King and our adored Princess of Wales.

Meghan, formerly the couture-clad figurehead of the Victimhood Olympics, stands revealed as the world’s biggest cry-bully; it’s now the Sussexes who look like the aggressors, which is a delightful irony, and one they’ll need extremely fast footwork to manage.

When Meghan arrived, she seemed so modern; now she looks like a relic from another age, a bored, rich, housewife whose only status comes from marrying well.

It’s a small thing, but for me The Handbag summed it up, going out for lunch in Montecito this week, wearing an outfit costing more than £60,000, Meghan carried a Dior bag embossed with the letters ‘DSSOS’ - Duchess of Sussex.

It would have been trashy behaviour from a footballer’s wife - flaunting the fact that your only achievement is marrying a rich man – but from a woman ceaselessly yapping about feminism, it was a spectacular own-goal.

So yes, there are quite a few things I can’t forgive this awful woman for - but probably the worst thing is for finally making me a monarchist.