LIZ JONES: I’ve always backed Meghan. But the red dress pictures have led me to a startling realisation… and I can no longer support her

I tried, I really did. I’d invested so much in our relationship. Years! Yes, I’d overlooked countless red flags. I’m loyal, after all. She’s a woman. Someone I saw as self-made, outspoken, a little broken, put upon, ridiculed and bullied by social and mainstream media.

But now? I cannot overlook that red dress. It was Meghan’s appearance on the red carpet at the Children’s Hospital Gala in Los Angeles this weekend that finally caused the scales to fall from my eyes.

Yes, I suddenly found myself cringing with second-hand embarrassment when I saw those pictures. And once you have that feeling, you can’t go back.

Previously, I have heaped praise on Meghan’s wedding dresses – all two of them. Applauded her love for dogs and all animals, a conviction she upheld despite joining a family that loves to shoot things. 

I adored her bravery in going up against a powerful dynasty, and her honesty at being unable to stomach cutting ribbons at some God-awful windswept new factory in Leicester. 

Girl, we hear you! As a one-time aspiring Hollywood actress, you know the meaning of hard, thankless work – you are one of us! You speak out about things that are hard to take or even believe, or bore you stiff. Self-care not sacrifice? I love it! 

But at that charity gala I realised that I was starting to ring false. Meghan, it’s you, not me. 

I’m sorry to say, in that ill-fitting dress you didn’t look like a regal royal – you looked diminished. That’s when I realised that what you now represent is so small as well: Meghan has gone from Duchess to D-list.

She hasn’t grown in stature over her years in the public eye, she has shrunk, as though she’d been put through a hot wash. Only her eyebrows have grown.

Compare the photo of Meghan in the pared-down version of the Carolina Herrera dress from this weekend to when she first wore it, in 2021, alongside Harry. 

Then it had a magnificent train which she has inexplicably chosen to remove. And she also back then still had that royal gloss – her hair was worn up, not loose and straggly. 

The split in the gown was also a bad choice, given it made the obligatory kneeling to talk to small children awkward, to put it politely.

As a Duchess, or even as a minor celeb, you really do have to think about these things.

I know I’m not alone in seeing Meghan now for the rather washed-up Hollywood celebrity she is. Dear God, even that bastion of uncritical, boring, American wholesomeness, InStyle magazine, just called Meghan a ‘jam entrepreneur’. Ouch! That’s gotta hurt.

For an event dedicated to helping children (even her red-carpet platitudes as a ‘Mom’ didn’t sound genuine: she said her friends from high school are all becoming moms; as they are mostly all in their 40s, surely this happened yonks ago), the dress code should have been demure, not Look At Me.

The red dress, and her desperate grinning, recalled her Deal Or No Deal era, when she was the ‘briefcase girl’ on the TV quiz show. I kept thinking: ‘Where’s the briefcase?’

And yes I did think, hmmmm, Catherine would have been covered up, in something lovely, loose and floaty. To be so exposed is unforgivable. It wasn’t the time or the place for flesh. 

Plus, the grabbing hold of other ‘attendees’ and the gurning. She’s like the unruly, loud friend who turns up at your hen do thinking it’s all about her, not the bride to be, and ends up falling in the pool.

It was just all a bit tacky.

And what’s this obsession with a red carpet anyway? 

Most real stars will tell you a red carpet is something to be endured, and escaped from as soon as possible (I’ve stood in fashion pens at the Baftas and the Oscars, and can’t tell you how many rolled eyes I’ve shared with the likes of Livia Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, the mouthed ‘My feet hurt!’ conspiratorial cries of anguish). You don’t keep running up and down it! The red carpet is a portal, a pain performed for the paparazzi. It’s not an achievement or even a destination.

I’d had high hopes for Meghan, but now I feel foolish. 

I’m all about the sisterhood. Women who work hard. Who speak up. I defended Meghan when she talked about wanting to end her own life while others ganged up, saying: ‘She looked perfectly jolly at the Royal Albert Hall.’ I’ve been suicidal, but have still smiled for a camera, turned up, done my job.

But now? I’m done. Meghan, you’re dumped. If only I knew how to block you, I’d do that, too.