The Meghan-Harry-Oprah interview shows we need stuff to chat about – but that shouldn’t mean putting others down
I asked an old friend of mine what he’d given up for Lent. Gossip, he said. My first thought was that I never saw him as much of a gossip; my second was there wasn’t a great deal to gossip about anyway. Gossip demands human interactions. Without them, not a great deal can be done or said that can be gossiped about. And gossiping itself, if it is to be done properly, really needs to be face to face, in hushed voices with sneering expressions and so on.
The whole world is crying out for material to gossip about, and this might well explain why the viewing figures for the Meghan-Harry-Oprah production seem to exceed the total population of planet Earth. Just as PR gurus look for the best time to bury bad news, the big interview came at a perfect time for maximum reach in a gossip-hungry world. In the darker days of the pandemic, fewer people would have cared; there was too much other terrible stuff to worry about. Now that the end is possibly in sight, our diminished global gossip reserves needed this mega dump of new material.
