With his Chanel skis and five-star celebrity lifestyle has Harry and Meghan’s cheerleader-in-chief Omid Scobie become even more regal than them?

Omid Scobie: there can’t be many individuals in the present day who’ve by no means heard of the royal creator or didn’t have seen his face within the papers or on TV.

He has been talked about greater than 8,500 occasions in press articles on this facet of the pond alone over the previous few years, typically described as Harry and Meghan’s cheerleader-in-chief, one thing he denies.

‘Spin-free’ and neutral is how he describes his fawning 2020 bestselling biography of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Discovering Freedom, which he co-wrote with fellow journalist Carolyn Durand. He was not being ironic.

Both manner, one factor nobody might accuse Scobie of, within the wake of his new-found fame, is failing to embrace the movie star life.

Solely this week, on the eve of the publication of his new ebook Endgame (subtitled ‘Contained in the Royal Household and the monarchy’s combat for survival’), he has posted an image from the window of what seems to be an opulent property in Los Angeles. It exhibits rain pattering onto the crystal-blue water of a sizeable swimming pool. The caption reads: ‘Didn’t join this.’

Sure, Omid. Even in California, the ‘Sunshine State’, it rains in November.

The U.S. has turn out to be a house from house for Scobie, the place he has commonly appeared on Good Morning America, been a contributor to ABC Information and the place his newest royal potboiler is being serialised in Individuals journal.

Images on his social media accounts depict him embracing the lifetime of an LA prince, visiting the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills and Nobu in Malibu, two of the realm’s costliest eating places. Each are movie star hangouts and fewer than two hours’ drive from Harry and Meghan’s Montecito mansion.

He has additionally shared pictures of himself in France: in Chamonix (he has a penchant for Chanel skis, apparently) and holidaying on the five-star Lodge du Cap-Eden-Roc in Cap d’Antibes on the Riviera (‘I stay right here now’ he joked on a video shot from the resort’s spectacular saltwater infinity pool).

Then there’s searching for designer garments and equipment (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, to call just a few manufacturers in his wardrobe) together with his beloved French bulldog, Yoshi.

Scobie as soon as turned up for a rendezvous with Tatler with Yoshi by his facet. The pooch, named after a Tremendous Mario character, was ‘lapping up water from a bowl his grasp produced from a Burberry man bag,’ to cite the interviewer, who noticed that Scobie was carrying high-end jewelry objects, together with a hoop by luxurious Hollywood model Chrome Hearts, whereas consuming espresso with almond milk.

In fact he was.

In one other photoshoot, accompanying {a magazine} article, Scobie will be seen posing aristocratically in a gold smoking jacket.

How a lot has he made since he started writing about Harry and Meghan? Some estimates put it at round $800,000 (simply over £660,000) – and that’s earlier than Endgame, billed as ‘exposing the chaos, household dysfunction, mistrust and draconian practices’ contained in the Royal Household, goes on sale subsequent week.

Kinsey Schofield, an American blogger and podcaster in regards to the Royal Household, met Scobie within the inexperienced room of a TV studio after they have been each commentating on a royal occasion final 12 months.

‘I’d describe him as large for his britches, very impressed with himself,’ she recalled. ‘He didn’t interact with me as a fellow commentator, which you assume somebody may do in a piece state of affairs.

‘He has an over-abundance of confidence — it’s inauthentic. He’s acquired some issues incorrect.’

We actually didn’t get the entire fact in Discovering Freedom.

Harry and Meghan persistently denied co-operating with the authors. Meghan was later compelled to confess within the Excessive Court docket privateness declare towards Related Newspapers that she had certainly authorised an aide to transient the authors and later apologised for deceptive the court docket, insisting she ‘had not remembered’ the e-mail alternate.

Related suspicions, rightly or wrongly, encompass Endgame.

Precisely what supposedly occurred on or round September 8, 2022, the day Queen Elizabeth handed away at Balmoral, is chronicled within the ebook.

Harry, it’s alleged, was not knowledgeable of his grandmother’s speedy decline or the very fact the Palace was already making preparations for the Queen’s remaining hours — ‘till his cellphone began ringing’, writes Scobie. ‘An unknown quantity. He often ignored these.’

Harry answered the decision after being persuaded by Meghan. On the road was his father telling him to make his strategy to Scotland instantly.

It’s laborious, other than the apparent, to see the place this info might have come from, isn’t it.

The subsequent factor Harry did, in line with Scobie, was to ship a textual content message to his brother ‘asking how he and Kate deliberate to get to Scotland and whether or not they might journey collectively. No response.’

Would any of Harry and Meghan’s circle, if that they had been aware of that revelation, have spoken to Scobie with out the couple’s permission?

Ultimately, they chartered a airplane to Scotland from Luton airport.

This week Scobie tweeted: ‘And let’s get this nonsense out the way in which —#ENDGAME is in regards to the present state of the British Royal Household. It’s not “Harry and Meghan’s ebook”, I’m not “Meg’s pal”, the Sussexes don’t have anything to do with it, their story is a small a part of a a lot greater one you may learn in 12 days.’

The Sussexes, too, have distanced themselves from the ebook.

Scobie has undergone fairly a metamorphosis down the years, not simply professionally — the person feted by society bible Tatler and who’s now royal editor-at-large for Harper’s Bazaar, used to run a seedy Korean web site, of which extra later — however bodily as effectively. His look modified dramatically after he returned from a visit to the Far East a decade or so in the past, in line with somebody who knew him again then.

You solely have to have a look at photographs of him, pre-Harry and Meghan, to maybe grasp why. ‘He simply appears to be like completely completely different,’ mentioned the individual, who encountered him professionally.

All this, plus with the revelation that he knocked 5 years off his age, saying he was 33 when he was actually 38, in an interview with the Instances in 2020, culminated in a latest headline: ‘Who’s Omid Scobie?’

Many individuals assume that, due to his sturdy U.S. hyperlinks, he’s American. Really, Scobie was born in Wales however introduced up in Oxford, the place he was a pupil on the prestigious fee-paying Magdalen Faculty Faculty, then, within the sixth type, he moved to Cherwell, a state secondary.

He’s the eldest of two brothers, his Scottish father arrange his personal advertising enterprise and his Persian mom is a social employee. Scobie himself makes use of the phrase ‘Persian’ quite than ‘Iranian’ as a result of, he says, ‘to Persians there’s a giant distinction. My mum’s facet of the household is just not Muslim and has no connection to the Islamic Republic of Iran.’

His first job, after graduating from the London Faculty of Communication, was as a showbusiness reporter for movie star gossip journal Warmth, which is able to shock some given what critics may name his lofty perspective to the favored press.

One of many ‘contacts’ he cultivated was glamour mannequin Jodie Marsh, peroxide blonde, former lapdancer and Essex Wives star, whom he accompanied to nightclubs. It was even rumoured they have been relationship.

Jodie made the entrance pages of the red-tops when she hit the city within the skimpiest of micro-minis and a few studded camouflage belts (barely) protecting her decolletage.

‘She is a down-to-earth, candy lady with a giant circle of buddies round her and no dangerous influences,’ Scobie wrote of her.

He left Warmth as a result of, he says, an govt referred to as him a ‘P***’ in emails. Scobie would spend the following decade at U.S. Weekly, the place he grew to become their European bureau chief, which concerned reporting extensively on the Royal Household.

It’s this era, specifically, which leaves Omid Scobie open to accusations of hypocrisy.

‘What will get my again up is that he acts like St Omid,’ mentioned a colleague from these days who has adopted his profession with no little disbelief.

‘It was a part of his job working for the People to ship paparazzi photographers out after celebrities and royals within the UK. It was Kate and William quite than the outdated royals they have been fascinated about so, mockingly, Omid would cowl all their appearances and write pleased, shiny constructive items about them.’

Distinction that with the portrayal of the now Prince and Princess of Wales in Discovering Freedom, drawn, it’s claimed, from greater than 100 sources. This included allegations that they by no means visited Harry and Meghan at their Cotswolds house, that William informed his brother ‘to get to know this lady’ earlier than he married her, and that Kate didn’t attempt to assist repair their relationship or try any significant friendship with Meghan.

Discovering Freedom topped bestseller lists in each Britain and the U.S.

Scobie used to get pleasure from relationship with fellow journalists on the royal beat, becoming a member of the press pack on excursions overseas, and even promoting them a few of his ‘spare tales’.

‘He was at all times properly spoken and well-dressed,’ mentioned his former colleague. ‘I believe he did see himself as a minimize above however had no drawback mixing with tabloid royal reporters.’ He earned sufficient protecting the royals for the U.S. media to afford an condominium in considered one of Canary Wharf’s most unique complexes and drive a Porsche.

Scobie additionally had a secret weapon, it turned out, which emerged on William and Kate’s tour of Canada in 2011.

‘He boasted about the truth that he might lip-read so he might work out what they have been saying,’ revealed a royal reporter who was on the identical journey.

May this be the identical Omid Scobie who has now reinvented himself as a crusader towards press intrusion? What his fellow royal reporters didn’t know was that Scobie had a sideline: operating a Korean leisure information web site IdolWow! to money in on the South Korean pop — or Okay-pop as it’s identified — international phenomenon.

One article on the platform in 2015 carried a ‘evaluation’ of a video that featured a singer wearing bra and hotpants on stage with an entourage of fashions, six in all, kneeling at her toes – collared, leashed and carrying pink bondage masks.

The article identified, in salacious element, how the video is ‘plagued by close-up crotch pictures in barely-there sizzling pants that showcase the 23-year-old’s lady group star’s bootylicious curves … at one level the brunette idol even squeezes her breasts collectively on the digital camera’.

The web site, which is now defunct, additionally highlights a star from one other group in her ‘tight bikini that flaunts her ample cleavage and supremely busty curves’.

It quite conflicts with Meghan’s feminist credentials, which Scobie has written enthusiastically about prior to now. He has additionally posted hyperlinks on social media to articles about sexism.

Scobie reportedly first met Meghan at Toronto Trend Week in the identical 12 months (2015) as his IdolWow! web site carried that distasteful evaluation.

She had not begun relationship Harry on the time, not less than not publicly, so he didn’t realise the importance of the encounter, he has since mentioned. That every one modified, as everybody now is aware of.

He later wrote a now well-known account of the Sussexes’ remaining engagement as working royals in 2020 when Meghan gave him ‘a giant farewell hug’ beneath the ‘malachite candelabras’ of the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace.

A royal correspondent I spoke to confirms Scobie was invited to the Palace as a journalist. He was there to cowl the perform in an expert capability, says the extremely revered journalist who has coated the Royal Household for a few years.

Why Scobie? It was as a result of they trusted him, the correspondent mentioned. Anybody who has learn Discovering Freedom, broadly acknowledged to be a one-sided narrative of Harry and Meghan’s fallout with ‘The Agency’, can be in little question in any respect that Scobie may very well be trusted.

He supported their privateness lawsuit towards The Mail on Sunday and lately appeared within the Excessive Court docket as witness for Prince Harry’s phone-hacking declare towards the writer of the Every day Mirror.

The identical loyalty, little question, can be evident in Omid Scobie’s newest chapter within the royal saga, which hits the bookshelves in just a few days.

Extra reporting: Tim Stewart