‘I didn’t do it’: Panicked Omid Scobie denies responsibility for error in Dutch copy of Endgame that ‘names the royal racist’ accused of speaking about Archie’s skin colour as sales of controversial book are halted in Holland and offending copies pulped
A panicked Omid Scobie has insisted he did not name a senior figure of The Firm as the ‘royal racist’, after his controversial new book was dramatically pulled from the shelves today in the Netherlands.
The author has blamed a ‘translation error’ for a passage in the Dutch language version of the book which appeared to name the person who allegedly questioned what colour Harry and Meghan’s unborn son Archie would be.
Publishers Xander have confirmed to the Daily Mail that it had received a last-minute request from the US to put sales of Endgame on hold and were ‘awaiting further instructions’.
Prior to publication the 42-year-old had said he would not publish the name of the accused after alleging a letter between Meghan and King Charles named the person responsible.
He has claimed libel laws prevented him naming them – although he has gone on to claim that a second person within the royal household also echoed the remarks.
But a page taken from a review copy of the book sent to Dutch journalists does seem to contain the person’s identity.
Meghan and Harry pictured with Archie during a tour of South Africa in September 2019
Scobie appeared on Dutch television today where he insisted the apparent naming was a translation error
Speaking to Dutch chat show RTL Boulevard today, Mr Scobie said insisted he was not to blame for the error.
‘The book is in several languages, and unfortunately I do not speak Dutch. But if there are translation errors, I’m sure the publishers will have it under control,’ he said.
‘I wrote and edited the English version. There’s never been no version that I’ve produced that has names in it.’
Although the Dutch version of the book does appear to name the person, both Scobie and publisher insist this is a translation error.
Referring to letters written between Meghan and the King discussing the issue, it reads: ‘But in those private letters [the identity] was confirmed: ….’ [the Mail has redacted the name concerned]
READ MORE HERE – All the bombshells from Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame
It is not clear why a foreign language version of the book would name an individual when other editions did not, or whether it was intentionally included or is a major publishing error.
A spokesman for the Dutch publisher said: ‘You are right but I can’t talk about the details. We have, however, received a request to put the title on hold and that is what we have done.’
Asked when that request was received, she explained: ‘Just now.
‘We are awaiting further instructions. I do not know how long this will be. You should speak to the US agent.’
The original claim was made by Meghan in her infamous Oprah interview of March 2020 when she revealed there were ‘several conversations’ between herself, Harry and members within the royal family about ‘how dark’ their baby could be before Archie was born.
‘In those months when I was pregnant [there were] concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born,’ Meghan said in the interview.
Harry added: ‘That conversation, I am never going to share. At the time it was awkward, I was a bit shocked.’
Meghan added: ‘I think it would be very damaging for them.’
The resulting furore led Prince William to state publicly that they were ‘very much not a racist family’.
Harry and Meghan discussed the ‘royal racist’ in their bomshell interview with Oprah Winfrey
Scobie does not name the ‘royal racist’ in the UK edition of Endgame
Buckingham Palace said the claims were ‘concerning’ and that ‘recollections may vary’ but they would address the claims privately.
Harry later clarified that the royal family member in question was not the Queen or the Duke of Edinburgh.
But in failing to say who was said to have made the remark and what the context was, it has sparked continuing debate and uncertainty that has haunted the Royal Family to this day.
Many of the couple’s critics believe it was deeply unfair to have raised allegations of racism without defining them or giving those involved the chance to explain their side of the story.
Speaking to US television show GMA3 today, Scobie had revealed his surprise that Harry and Meghan hadn’t spoken about the issue again in their Netflix documentary or during the Duke of Sussex’s memoir, Spare.
READ MORE HERE – Who is Omid Scobie?
When asked by hosts what he was able to share about what he’d learned about the allegations, Scobie said he had ‘always wondered why’ the couple failed to mention the remarks again after airing them so publicly during their bombshell sit-down with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021.
‘Listen, there are many people that argued, ‘It’s normal to have conversations about what a child might look like at birth.’ But I think the problematic term that Meghan raised was that there were ‘concerns’ over the color of Archie’s skin,’ he said.
‘I always wondered why Harry and Meghan didn’t continue that conversation in the Netflix series and in Harry’s book Spare. It was like it disappeared out of sight and I wanted to get to the bottom of that.’
In his new book Scobie refers to a subsequent exchange of letters between Meghan and her father-in-law that both parties are said to have wanted to keep confidential that address the duchess’s ‘concerns about unconscious racial bias in the royal family’.
It is suggested they contained ‘damning details’.
Scobie goes on to say that Charles first reached out to Meghan in spring 2021 to express his sadness over the ‘distance’ between them and his disappointment that the couple chose to go so public with their words.
He apparently said how ‘upset’ he was over the claims that ‘concern’ had been raised about what Archie’s skin colour night be ‘and what that would look like [for the Firm].’
He adds that in the pages of these private letters ‘two identities were revealed. Laws in the United Kingdom prevent me from reporting who they were.’
Archie seen with baby Lilibet in the Sussexes’ 2021 Christmas card
He quotes ‘sources’ as saying that the King wanted his response to make clear to his daughter-in-law that he felt there was ‘no ill will or casual prejudice when the two people had spoken about his future grandson’.
The book also quotes a ‘royal insider’ saying: ‘He wanted to clear up something he felt strongly about’.
Despite the clear inferences in her interview, Scobie is at pains to stress that Meghan never used the words racist or racism when she spoke about the event or in her letters.
READ MORE HERE – Omid Scobie, 42, finally admits he lied about his age because he had a ‘little insecurity’ about turning 40
He says her concerns were that the tone revealed ‘lingering unconscious bias and ignorance with the family that needed to be addressed.’
He claims while the king and Meghan never saw ‘eye to eye’ on the issue ‘there was at least a feeling that both had been heard’.
Scobie adds there was ‘no hard feelings’.
One well-placed source with knowledge of the situation has emphasised to the Mail that the conversation was a private one between Harry and the person concerned and that Meghan was not present. Her husband later relayed the conversation to her.
There was no immediate comment from Buckingham Palace.
Scobie has also insisted that Harry and Meghan did not brief him for Endgame – but revealed ‘people around them’ were happy to tell all about ‘the ins and outs’ of their rows with the Royal Family.
He told the Evening Standard: ‘There’s enough people around them and in their orbit who know the ins and outs of things’, adding: ‘If there’s ever been a private encounter with Meghan, I’ve spoken about it’.
Mr Scobie has also denied Endgame is biased in favour of the Sussexes, with one pithy review claiming the main chapter on Harry and Meghan is more like a press release sent from their team. Another critic said ‘he paints Meghan and Harry in a relentless saintly light’.
Instead Mr Scobie says he is not close to the former Suits star and her royal husband, only drawn to ‘injustice’ and aims to highlight what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Windsors trying to be a ‘perfect example of traditional family values’.
Omid Scobie appears to be in New York today (pictured) for a series of US TV interviews to promote his latest attack on the Royal Family – but Palace insiders have ignored it
King Charles III (L) and Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (C) speak with CEO of Nissan Makoto Uchida (R) at Buckingham Palace to mark the conclusion of the Global Investment Summit yesterday
Prince William, Prince of Wales, onstage during the 2023 Tusk Conservation Awards at The Savoy Hotel last night
Scobie’s ‘depressingly poisonous’ Endgame was today written off as just another book by those inside Buckingham Palace, MailOnline can reveal. Omid is particularly cruel to Prince William and his wife, who he says is dubbed ‘Katie Keen’.
He also appears to blame them, especially Kate, for pushing Meghan out: ‘There was a coldness towards Meghan from the very early stages that I always found quite surprising.
‘I always found it interesting that when Meghan was going through the sort of toughest days of her life, and struggling with mental health issues… someone within the family who’s experienced that glare as a newcomer for the first time herself… wasn’t able to turn around and help a family member. To me, I think that speaks a lot to someone’s character.’
READ MORE HERE – ROBERT JOBSON: It’s time for Harry and Meghan to speak out and distance themselves from these ill-informed and lurid allegations
He also said to the Evening Standard that as a ‘woman of colour’, Meghan becoming a royal is a ‘really important moment in British history’.
He said the Windsors should have tried harder to keep her close, ‘regardless of whether she’s likeable’. Not keeping her in The Firm sends a ‘strong message about the institution’s attitudes towards people from different backgrounds’.
He told the Standard that Prince William is now ‘very consumed, very hot tempered, quick to react’ and staff needing to ‘check which way the wind’s blowing before talking to him’.
Mr Scobie also told the Standard: ‘It makes me wonder how happy he is in his role’, adding that he believes there is a ‘widening divide between father and son’.
In the same interview he admitted to being 42, having previously lied about his age.
He said: ‘I work in an industry where I’m surrounded by people who are, let’s say, conservative with telling their age, particularly in television’, claiming it is ‘par for the course’ to ‘swipe’ years from your age.
Mr Scobie blamed a ‘little insecurity’ about turning 40 and thought ‘no one would ever know’ – but journalists checked.
‘You learn from those mistakes. I can’t do much more than own it’, he said.
He also hit back at criticism of his journalism defending his experience and revealing he is a good lip-reader and that has helped with some of his royal scoops.
He added: ‘I have had to deal with envy, I’ve had to deal with prejudice,’ he says. ‘I’m okay with it, at this point, it’s just all noise’.
Today he hit back at his critics on Instagram – and ignored some of the reviews – to declare: ‘After all the nonsense written by people who haven’t seen the book, I’m looking forward to everyone actually being able to read Endgame for themselves’.
William, Harry, Meghan and Charles speak together at Westminster Abbey in March 2019
Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame about the Royal Family is released today
Buckingham Palace has kept a contemptuous silence but a royal source has dismissed Mr Scobie’s Endgame as just another book on the Windsors that is not worthy of official comment.
The insider told MailOnline when asked if there were truth in claims made by Mr Scobie: ‘There are hundreds of books written about the Royal Family’. Endgame was released today but some of the reviews have been poor. Even the Sussex-sympathising New York Times was withering.
READ MORE HERE – Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s ‘total system reboot’: Couple are revamping their career direction after being surprised at Spotify ‘turning down so many of their ideas’, sources claim
The new book on the royals was branded ‘vicious’ and ‘plain nasty’ last night. Well-placed sources described wild claims that Charles, Camilla and William conspired to undermine Harry and Meghan as ‘depressingly poisonous’.
Omid Scobie’s book also takes aim at the Princess of Wales, branding her ‘cold’ and lambasting her for backing mental health causes while ‘ignoring Meghan’s cries for help’.
It tries to stoke a row over the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s jokey bid to deflect questions about the Sussexes’ bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview by saying: ‘Oprah who?’
He says this made Edward and Sophie seem ‘casually bigoted’. Endgame, which was published in Australia yesterday and hits shelves here today, paints an almost comically negative view of the monarchy, with royals depicted as pantomime-style villains.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have declined to comment, believing they have nothing to gain from engaging with the claims. Charles and William were both instead out on public engagements close to their hearts – the King hosting a global investment summit and his son attending the Tusk Conservation Awards.
Those in royal circles describe the book as ‘plain nasty’, ‘vicious’ and a ‘skewed’ retelling of family events ‘in the Sussex style’. Endgame claims:
- Charles’s ‘ineptitude’ in handling Harry and Meghan – and refusal to give them the apology they demanded – has turned them into ‘disruptors’;
- Harry tried to ‘reach out’ to his father after the publication of his vitriolic memoir, Spare, earlier this year by calling his father, but felt the King’s response was ‘cold and brief’;
- Senior royals turned a blind eye to aides leaking details about the Sussexes as part of their power games and subjected them to ‘institutional cruelty’;
- William and his father are at loggerheads about the future of the monarchy and the handling of family issues;
- Their ‘distrust and simmering animosity’ resulted in Charles deriving ‘schadenfreude’ from his son’s supposedly disastrous tour of Caribbean last year;
- William is ‘colder’ – but also inexplicably more ‘hot-headed’ – than his father and ‘has no problem taking prisoners on the way’;
- Camilla colluded in stories being leaked about other royals and has ‘no relationship’ with Harry. The book says she has ‘great sympathy’ for what Meghan went through but ‘no respect’ for the way the Sussexes handled themselves;
- The King was so indecisive about how to treat his beleaguered brother Andrew that William had to step in to insist he lose his privileges;
- Charles ‘stumbled’ through his first 100 days as King and Queen Elizabeth had so little faith in him she made a former spymaster her ‘CEO’.
Endgame? It might discomfort the Royal Family for a few minutes…but it’s hardly a devastating blow: BBC says Omid Scobie’s book fails to pack a punch and is ‘a little bit awkward’ at best – as reviewers call it a ‘hit job reading like a Mumsnet post’
By TOM PYMAN
Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame was today dismissed by a senior BBC reporter as being merely ‘a little bit awkward for a few minutes’ for the Royal Family.
BBC News royal correspondent Sean Coughlan claimed readers expecting ‘juicy scandal and gossip’ would be disappointed and it was ‘not really landing punches’.
He said it was ‘very critical’ of King Charles III, Camilla, Prince William and Kate – but ‘you often feel the biggest flaw they have is not being Prince Harry and Meghan’.
Mr Coughlan added: ‘I think it’s not going to damage the Royal Family but it might be a little bit awkward for a few minutes I think rather than for days and days.’
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, he continued: ‘It’s highly critical but also I think maybe oddly enough it feels slightly out of date. If you call the Royal Family a soap opera, this feels like a soap opera from a couple of years ago.
‘And I think it’s sort of maybe settling some scores. But I don’t think it’s getting under their skin enough to have new information that would be really hurtful.
The first reviews of Omid Scobie’s Endgame are out and critics have said it is ‘devoted to setting the record straight on petty slights against the Sussexes’
‘It’s quite exciting in places but it doesn’t have that explosive power that (Harry’s memorial) Spare had, because partly that was written from one person’s viewpoint who was actually in the ring. But this is a kind of slightly distant criticism from afar.’
It comes after the book faced damning reviews following its release, with one labelling it as a ‘hit job reading like a Mumsnet post about the world’s worst in-laws’.
Endgame, which hits shelves today, received two stars out of five in the Telegraph, which slams the author’s ‘burning indignation that he was shut out’ of the Palace.
It adds that there is ‘little gossip to be had here’ while simultaneously containing ‘a lot of petty detail’.
The verdict from the Times was not much kinder, calling the book ‘not so much an incisive look at why he thinks the monarchy is doomed, more a mishmash of ancient history’.
The review also mocks Scobie’s ‘po-faced prose’ and describes the book as starting with ‘him buying a black sweater, followed by how he got to a TV studio in Hammersmith’.
The New York Times’ pithy review says we’ve heard most of it before
The Independent has given Endgame three stars in their review. They claim the book paints William as the ‘villain’
Endgame, which hits shelves today, received a damning two stars out of five in the Telegraph
It comes after the usually Sussex-sympathising New York Times compares Scobie’s writing to an AI bot and declares that Harry and Meghan’s favoured journalist does them ‘no favours’.
In a pithy review, the liberal US newspaper claims a chapter on the couple even ‘reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT’.
It also says the book ‘is not all that different from what Harry presented in ‘Spare’,’ and ‘is devoted to setting the record straight on petty slights against the Sussexes’.
America’s first review of the book adds: ‘Readers hoping for a final death blow of gossip will be disappointed. We’ve heard much of it before. From Fergie, from Diana, from Charles, from Harry, from Harry, from Harry again.’
Meanwhile the similarly left-leaning Independent news website in the UK claims ‘he paints Meghan and Harry in a relentless saintly light’.
The NYT’s writer Eva Wolchover, who co-hosts its Windsors & Losers royal podcast, is critical of Endgame after receiving an advanced copy.
She says: ‘Whether or not Scobie actively collaborated with Meghan and Harry for this book, he does them no favours. Their chapter reads like a press release cooked up by ChatGPT, and does little to shed light on them as humans.’
The New York Times had the first review in the US, and The Independent in the UK. Both are left-leaning press
Ms Wolchover also says of the author’s warnings that the Royal Family faces ‘extinction’: ‘It’s hard not to find Scobie’s dire predictions a tad hyperbolic.’
She writes: ‘Scobie defines the term ‘endgame’ as ‘the final stages of a chess game after most of the pieces have been removed from the board’, adding: ‘Unless Charles and his heirs act quickly, Scobie underscores, they risk losing the crown, or at the very least, any remaining cultural relevance.’
The Independent had the first British review of Endgame, giving it three-stars.
Writer Anna Pasternak says that Scobie ‘is unfailingly sympathetic to the Sussexes’.
She writes: ‘He does not hold them accountable for anything – he does not, as I had anticipated, demonise Charles or denounce Camilla. I was expecting something different – him possibly laying into evil monarch King Charles and wicked stepmother, Queen Camilla. The real royal villain here is William’.
Latest on Omid Scobie’s Endgame release
Chapter by chapter: From taking aim at ‘cold’ to Kate, Harry and William’s ‘irreparable’ rift, all the bombshells from Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame
Omid Scobie takes aim at ‘cold’ Kate in first bombshells
Omid Scobie claims he knows identity of royals who ‘commented on Archie’s skin colour’
Omid Scobie accuses Prince Edward and Sophie of ‘a royal screw up’
Camilla has ‘no relationship with Prince Harry’
King Charles was ‘cold and brief’ in ‘awkward’ phone call with Prince Harry
New York Times gives withering verdict on Omid Scobie’s ‘Endgame’ in one of first reviews
William and Kate’s ‘glossy’ five minute Instagram video they released after Coronation is sign of the ‘growing lack of cohesion’ between the King and prince because it only featured 14 seconds of Charles and Camilla
King Charles will ‘never reach the national treasure status’ of the Queen who would always rise ‘over and above’ the ‘problematic’ royal family members and their ‘squabbles and turmoil’
Prince William ‘set the wheels in motion’ in stripping Andrew of his royal duties because he thought the family was being ‘too soft’
Harry and Meghan were left ‘confused and upset’ with the Waleses lack of contact after two royals made comments about Archie’s skin tone
Omid Scobie accuses King Charles of evicting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from Frogmore Cottage in ‘cheap shot’ to ‘punish’ the couple for their bombshell Netflix series
King Charles and Prince William are ‘allowing selfish agendas and family discord to take over the House of Windsor’ – but there is ‘friction’ in their relationship
King Charles was ‘stubbornly hard to pin down’ on whether Meghan and Harry would be invited to the Coronation
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