...another revelation from Spare

There aren’t many people Prince Harry feels sorry for in his new memoirs – except himself, of course.

But in that limited category falls one group of long-suffering people: comedians sent to entertain the troops.

The Duke of Sussex recalls being almost compelled to attend a stand-up show in Cyprus after his tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2013.

He spent around a day of ‘decompression’ at the UK’s Akrotiri military on the base, after five months in the front line as an Apache helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps.

But he says processing the trauma of war meant the troops were not the best audience, despite being given a couple of cans of free beer each.

Writing in Spare, the Prince says: ‘We were then taken to a comedy show. Attendance was quasi-mandatory. Whoever organised it had had good intentions: a bit of levity after a tour of hell.

‘And, to be fair, some of us did laugh. But most didn’t. We were struggling and didn’t know we were struggling. We had memories to process, mental wounds to heal, existential questions to sort.

‘(We’d been told that a padre was available if we needed to talk, but I remember no one going near him.) So we just sat at the comedy show in the same way we’d sat in the VHR tent [the very-high readiness tent where they would wait on alert for mussions]. In a state of suspended animation. Waiting.

‘I felt bad for those comedians. One tough gig.’

But he didn’t reveal, or remember, which stand-ups were on stage that night.

Published: 12 Jan 2023