The day has finally arrived. The publishing world’s most highly-anticipatedHarry-themed tome since JK Rowling dropped “Deathly Hallows” in 2007 hasfinally hit bookshelves. Many of the revelations within Prince Harry’s memoir“Spare” – sibling jousts, frozen penises and a lot of drug use – havealready been highly publicized after bookstores in Spain broke the strictembargo last Thursday and Harry did a round of television interviews.
But read on for 11 jaw-dropping anecdotes you may have missed…
1. Prince Harry did magic mushrooms at Courteney Cox’s house while(maybe) Will Arnett watched…
Harry describes how, in Jan. 2016, he was hanging out with some chums in LAwho knew “Friends” alum Courteney Cox and suggested they take the party overto her house. “As a ‘Friends’ fanatic, the idea of crashing at Monica’shouse was highly appealing,” he writes. He then recalls how Cox invited morepeople over including someone readers are led to believe is Will Arnett(Arnett isn’t specifically namechecked but instead referred to as the actorfrom the “Batman Lego movie”). After asking Arnett to say something as Batman(“in perfectly gravelly Batmanese [he] said: Hello Harry ,” Harry writes)the actor reportedly led Harry and his friend to Cox’s fridge to get a softdrink where the trio spotted “black diamond mushroom chocolates” in thefridge.
“Someone behind me said they were for everybody,” Harry recalls. “ Helpyourself guys. ” Arnett declined but Harry ate some and then proceeded to goon a dug-induced trip in Cox’s bathroom, where he hallucinated that her silvertrash can was talking to him.
2. He borrowed Tom Hardy’s actual “Mad Max: Fury Road” costume for hisfirst Halloween with Meghan…
In Oct. 2016, just a few months into their courtship, Meghan invited Harry tospend Halloween with her at Soho House in Toronto, where she was still workingon “Suits.” The couple also invited Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie andEugenie’s husband Jack Brooksbank (who works for George Clooney’s Casamigotequila company). Before flying from London to Toronto for the party, Harryhit up his pal Tom Hardy for a costume. “I’d phoned him to borrow his costumefrom ‘Mad Max,’” Harry writes.
“The whole thing?” Hardy apparently replied.
“Yes, please mate!” said Harry. “The whole kit.”
Hardy duty. “He’d given it all to me before I left Britain, and now I tried iton in Meg’s little bathroom. When I came out, she roared with laughter. It wasfunny. And a little scary. But the main thing was: I was unrecognizable.”
Prince Harry gives an interview to ITV’s Tom Bradby ahead of the publicationof his memoir, ‘Spare.’ Courtesy of ITV
3. He talks a lot about his penis…
The book features frequent references to the royal penis and readers are toldthat not only is it circumcised but also it was suffering from frostbiteduring his brother William’s 2011 wedding to Kate Middleton. Harry, who flewto the wedding directly from the North Pole where he had been on a charitytrek, recalls: “Pa [Prince Charles] was very interested and sympathetic aboutthe discomfort of my frostnipped ears and cheeks, and it was an effort not toovershare and tell him also about my equally tender penis.”
Later in the book, Harry says a friend advises him to put a fancy skincarecream on it to help it heal (“My mum used that on her lips. You want me to putthat on my todger?” he apparently replied) before visiting a doctor on HarleyStreet for advice after Googling “partial penectomies.” A few years later,when he went on an expedition to the South Pole, Harry’s friend “hired aseamstress to make me a bespoke cock cushion” to ensure his royal appendagedidn’t suffer again. According to Harry, it was a superb garment. “Square,supportive, it was sewn from pieces of the softest fleece and… Enough said.”
4. Despite being a prince, Harry used to do his own laundry whilewatching “Friends”…
Harry often references how unglamorous royal life is, from worn bedsheets atQueen Elizabeth II’s Scottish palace Balmoral to his dark and cramped livingquarters at Kensington Palace to shopping for cut-price clothes at his localTK Maxx (the British version of TJ Maxx.) He writes: “Besides my own laundry(often laid out to dry on my radiators) I did my own chores, my own cooking,my own food shopping.”
“People often speculated that I was clinging to my bachelor life because itwas so glamorous,” he explains. “Many evenings I’d think: if only they couldsee me now. Then I’d go back to folding my underwear and watching ‘The Onewith Monica and Chandler’s Wedding.’”
5. Harry says the Royal Family made the showrunners on “Suits” changetheir scripts…
After Meghan and Harry’s relationship became public, the actor continued towork on her show “Suits” but Harry says her dual commitments becameincreasingly difficult thanks to interfering royal courtiers. “The showwriters were frustrated, because they were often advised by the Palace comms[communications] team to change lines of dialogue, what her character woulddo, how she would act.”
Harry also reveals his brother William and sister-in-law Kate were massive“Suits” fans and describes their reactions when he first told them who he wassecretly dating: “Their mouths fell open. They turned to each other. ThenWilly turned to me and said ‘Fuck off!’ […] I was baffled until Willy and Kateexplained that they were regular – nay, religious – viewers of ‘Suits.’ Great,I thought, laughing. I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing. All this timeI’d though Willy and Kate might not welcome Meg into the family, but now Ihave to worry about them hounding her for an autograph.”
6. Harry huffed laughing gas while Meghan was in labor with Archie…
Meghan was given gas and air while in labor at London’s fancy PortlandHospital in 2019. But Harry admits he huffed it before she did. “A canister oflaughing gas beside Meg’s bed. I took several slow, penetrating hits,” hewrites, while Meghan was bouncing on a ball. “I took several more hits and nowI was bouncing too.” When Meghan’s contractions began to quicken a nurse camein to give her some gas before realizing the tank was empty. “I could see thethought slowly dawning. Gracious, the husband’s had it all,” he recalls.“’Sorry,’ I said meekly.’
Harry and Meghan (courtesy of Netflix) Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
7. He compares his life to ‘The Truman Show’…
Harry explains the bizarre existence of the British royal family, who areraised not to work (he says his father had “always been discouraged from hardwork, he told me.”). Earlier in the book, Harry says after he left school hehoped to become a ski instructor or safari guide, but his father told him bothprofessions were unsuitable. Which is why he is so frustrated when, after heand Meghan move to LA, his family cut him off financially.
“I’d never asked to be financially dependent on Pa,” he writes. “I’d beenforced into this surreal state, this un-ending ‘Truman Show’ in which I almostnever carried money, never owned a car, never carried a house key, never onceordered anything online, never received a single box from Amazon, _almost_never traveled on the [London] Underground.”
8. He peed his underpants before his first date with Meghan…
Hours before Harry and Meghan’s first date, the prince was taking part in afive-hour sailing race. He says the weather conditions were so bad other boatsdropped out but his team of eleven kept going. “I’d never feared death before,and now I found myself thinking: Please don’t let me drown before my bigdate,” he remembers. “Then another fear took hold. The fear of no onboard[toilet]. I held it in for as long as I possibly could, until I had nochoice.”
Harry says he tried to pee into the sea but with the whole crew looking at himhe got “stage fright.” It was only when he went back to his post he wasfinally able to let go. “Finally I went back to my post, sheepishly hung fromthe ropes, and peed my pants. Wow, I thought, if Ms Markle could see me now.”After the race he jumped into the river to wash the pee off then got in a carwith his bodyguards to meet Meghan at a private member’s club in centralLondon “where the bigger race, the ultimate race, was about to begin.”
9. He and Meghan were on vacation with Elton John and David Furnish whenthey decided to sue four British tabloids…
Tormented by negative press coverage in the summer of 2019, Harry, Meghan andbaby Archie fled to Elton John’s pad in the South of France. “We’re sort oflosing it here, guys,” the royal couple told John and Furnish, who invitedthem to stay. “To be out of the fishbowl [of royal life] for even an afternoonfelt like day release from prison,” Harry writes. He explains that during thetrip John and Furnish introduced Harry to a friend who suggested he and Meghanhire their own lawyer to sue the British tabloids.
Harry also says that during the vacation, he often caught John looking at babyArchie “and I knew what he was thinking,” the prince says. “[He resembled]mummy.” John famously played “Candle in the Wind” at Diana’s funeral.
Prince Harry, Megan DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images
10. Harry loses his virginity to a mysterious older woman in a field…
In a scene that has shocked readers, Harry reveals how he lost his virginity.“Inglorious episode, with an older woman,” he recalls. “She liked horses,quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion. Quick ride, afterwhich she’d smacked my rump and sent me off to graze. Among the many thingsabout it that were wrong: it happened in a grassy field behind a busy pub.”
British tabloids have, unsurprisingly, been trying to track down the mysterywoman. One model mooted as the potential virginity-taker denied herinvolvement, posting a photograph of a packet of Ginger Nuts biscuits on herInstagram Stories alongside the caption: “The only ones I’ve EVER touched.”
11. Harry thanks a number of his celebrity friends in the book’s finalpages…
As well as thanking Meghan, his children Archie and Lili, and his publishers,Harry also thanks a number of celebrity friends in the book’s acknowledgments,including Oprah, Tyler Perry, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, polo player NachoFigueras and his wife Delphi, and “The Late Late Show” host James Corden.
Other starry names who appear in the book alongside Courteney Cox, Tom Hardyand Elton John are the Spice Girls, whom Harry first met on a trip to SouthAfrica in 1997 (he writes that Geri Haliwell, also known as Ginger Spice, was“the only Spice with whom I felt any connection – a fellow ginger”), IdrisElba, whom Harry invited to the launch of his Invictus Games competition forwounded vets, and British TV host Caroline Flack, with whom Harry admits hehad a brief fling before she died by suicide in 2020.