Prince Harry wants to talk about his childhood and work out whom to blame. So do I. I grew-up in Mount Waverley and they really were a bunch of secateurs wielding, lawn mowing bastards – especially the old guy with the Labrador and heart-monitoring device.  

I asked my father-figure therapist about this while he was explaining how a billable hour works, and he said: what’s the point unless you can monetize it. Which sounds like something my daddy would say. 

So what is it with the Oprah-fication of Harry’s daddy issues? First, it was the tell-all, exclusive all-you-can-eat Oprah-Meghan interview. Now it’s the full Bain Marie of the Oprah and Harry TV-series The Me You Can’t See, which seems counterintuitive given you can see Harry and Meghan just about everywhere, anytime you want usually on Network 10 around 9 pm which is past my bedtime.  

My therapist says it all would have worked out better, if only we had all started as adults, fully formed, a royal Benjamin Button like Prince Phillip, already cranky and disappointed with life. Possibly dead, in a military uniform with ungrateful in-laws carrying you to the grave. In some civilizations this is considered a Haiku. 

What made these celebrities so insecure about their daddy issues? Covid? Maybe the highly frisky North Pole strain? Being locked down for months in suburbia or a 14 million dollar Hollywood mansion with only your furniture to talk to can be depressing. Even if that furniture cost a lot of money and is well connected to Piers Morgan.   

The Japanese – so emotive, and yet so talented when it comes to landscape gardening understand the father-figure problem. Their scientists have proven that you can die of a broken heart brought on by your daddy issues. And not just on a television game show where you put your face in a bowl of cockroaches for money.  

It’s called Taksatubo and results from the pressing loneliness in your life or when someone you deeply care about – like your personal trainer, financial advisor or daddy – leaves you. You can see it in their Tokyo Olympics’ mascot Miraitowa and his unrequited cosplay love, despairing as he wonders if the Games will proceed and he’ll get to marry Someity before the Hammer Throw or maybe one of the Italian pole vaulters.  

These scientists also talk about Jinshin jiko (human body accident) and what happens when you are famous and fall in front of a high-speed train. And I see the emotional Jinshin jiko everywhere – especially in Melbourne ‘s progressively empty Collins Street where they all used to dress like Harry or Meghan in Suits-mode while howling inside from unresolved Daddy issues that leave them hurtling along to endless team building workshops, collecting vintage Princess Diana Toby Jugs or maybe putting on a vanity ribbon to show how much they really care.  

Our Victorian Government has daddy issues too after its very own Daddy broke his back possibly while playing golf or getting drunk with somebody else’s daddy while on a fishing trip. But probably not. Good Daddies never do stuff like that; they’re too busy washing the dishes, putting the kids to bed and building dodgy spice racks out of guilt. 

In its idle moments between locking us down and letting us out, the government is installing a new injecting room in nearby Flinders Street. Everybody knows the safe injecting room is just another dodgy spice rack built by political daddies out of societal guilt. 

Local storeowners are concerned about an influx of addicts to the area but really I’m more concerned about an increase in zombified fragile suits crippled by lockdown visiting not for the hit, but rather wanting to talk about their daddy issues and the plausible online bitcoin marketing they believe in because of the authoritative father-figure voice over.  

Michael Scammell is a human spice rack. He writes at https://mdswords.wordpress.com and Tweets at @MichaelScammell.