As Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. During Prince Harry’s recent travails in court he was given the in-depth public interrogation about ‘his truth’ that he has never faced before. As if this were not enough to disturb the equilibrium of the Sussexes, it has been announced by Spotify that their Archetypes podcast, launched to disproportionate fanfare in 2020, is to come to an end.

In that brief, halcyon period for Harry and Meghan shortly after their quasi-abdication, when everything they did seemed to turn to gold, they signed a $20 million (£15.6 million) deal with the streaming company. And for what? A dozen episodes of a mediocre podcast series, conducted by a host more interested in talking about herself than in engaging with her guests.

Even the most indulgent companies, once so desperate to ally themselves with the duo, have tired of their repetitive schtick

It was not wildly surprising, then, that Spotify has decided to pull the plug. The company is hardly known for handing out millions of dollars to already wealthy people for little return on their investment.

Recently, they talked darkly about a ‘strategic realignment’ in their podcasting department. They have since fired 200 people in a suitably strategic fashion, presumably in an attempt to make up some of the shortfall that that pesky $20 million paycheque must have cost them.

It has been suggested, that ‘going forward’, Spotify will not be seeking to sign up big names to highly paid exclusive deals: once bitten, twice shy. Yet one of their reasons for not commissioning a second series of the Sussexes’ podcast was simple: according to one anonymous insider, presumably delighted to be getting the dirt off their chest, Harry and Meghan simply hadn’t produced enough worthwhile content to justify their vast expense.

It did not help that their podcast was never very good. Archetypes, as it was known – the name an irritatingly cutesy/coy pun on the Sussexes’ organisation Archewell, as well as their eldest child Archie – consisted of Meghan interviewing a series of guests about self-consciously worthy topics.

Episodes bore titles like ‘The Audacity of the Activist’, ‘Upending the Angry Black Woman Myth’ and ‘Breaking Down The Bimbo’. The guests – exclusively female until the final episode, when Judd Apatow, Trevor Noah and Andy Cohen appeared to discuss male attitudes towards female archetypes – consisted of the likes of Paris Hilton, Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell and the actress Jameela Jamil, a woman whose thespian qualities seem inversely proportional to her activism on social media.

Every episode had a similar format. Meghan would suggest that something was bad, her guests would all agree, and go on to say how awful the social, patriarchal construct was that had allowed them all to rise to fame and fortune. There were no dissenting voices allowed, no hint of debate; instead, the podcast swiftly became an exercise in privileged navel-gazing. Despite the novelty value engendered by the Sussexes’ involvement – and in truth Harry barely featured, being a man – it was never remotely required listening, and so few will mourn its cessation.

There will now be rumours that Spotify will attempt to withhold at least some of the $20 million that was offered, and that Harry and Meghan will attempt to find another company willing to wave another large cheque in their direction. A representative of the Duchess’s powerful talent agency WME said ‘the team behind Archetypes remain proud of the podcast they created at Spotify’. They added, or threatened: ‘Meghan is continuing to develop more content for the Archetypes audience on another platform.’

Questions are being asked as to what the future holds for the publicity-seeking pair: more Netflix specials? ‘Cooking with Harry and Meghan’? Therefore, this is a reminder that even the most indulgent companies, once so desperate to ally themselves with the duo, have tired of their repetitive schtick. You might even say that this particular humiliation could well turn out to be archetypal, as regards their new career.