Meghan Markle's dad opens up about royal wedding controversy & regret with Piers Morgan

‘The unfortunate thing now is that I’m a footnote in one of the greatest moments in history - instead of a dad walking his daughter down the aisle.’

Those were the poignant, regretful words of Meghan Markle’s father Thomas to me on Good Morning Britain this morning.

It would take a heart of stone to hear that admission and not feel sympathy for the world’s most famous absentee father-of-the-bride.

OK, perhaps he’s being a tad hyperbolic over the historical importance of his girl’s marriage to Prince Harry, who is now sixth in line to the throne and likely to drop even further down the ladder if his brother William keeps breeding at his current rate. 

But it was a moment watched by over a billion people around the world, and it was a moment that should have featured Thomas centre stage, proudly at his daughter’s side as she married into the British Royal Family.

Instead, he was on his own in a B&B room 6,000 miles away, watching it all unfurl on TV as tears streamed down his face.

‘She was beautiful, I cried a little watching her,’ he said.

As he said this, his face crunched with emotion and my natural journalistic cynicism evaporated.

I was very critical of Thomas Markle in the week leading up to the wedding, believing his shocking decision to collude with a paparazzo photographer over staged photos came very close to wrecking the biggest day of his daughter’s life.

It was a particularly dumb thing to do after Kensington Palace specifically asked the media to leave him alone.

The understandable press frenzy that erupted after the bombshell revelation exacerbated Thomas’s existing heart problems, and meant he couldn’t fly to London.

‘By taking the paparazzi shilling, and now missing the wedding,’ I wrote at the time, ‘Thomas Markle broke his future son-in-law’s trust, and his little girl’s heart.’

I stand by that harsh judgement; it was indefensible behaviour.

But after my lengthy interview with him today, conducted with my GMB co-host Susanna Reid, I’ve changed my mind about this rather shy, gentle man whose life was irrevocably changed forever when Meghan fell in love with Harry.

First, he fully acknowledged his own reckless stupidity in staging those pictures.

‘I realize it was a serious mistake,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to take it back.’

Second, it’s almost impossible to comprehend the tsunami of attention that cascaded on the poor guy’s head from the second the engagement was formally announced.

His account of how he discovered the identity of Meghan’s new man was both comical and endearing: ‘The first phone calls were, “Daddy, I have a new boyfriend.” And I said, “That’s really nice.” And the next call was like, “He’s British,” and I said, ‘That’s really nice.” And eventually the third time around was like, “He’s a prince.” And at that point, she said, ‘It’s Harry.” And I said, ‘Oh, Harry, OK!’

For a man eking out a quiet retirement of considerable solitude in a remote part of Mexico, this would prove to be a spectacularly inconvenient revelation, though he is far too proud of his daughter to admit it.

To their shame, senior Palace officials didn’t immediately put someone on a plane to take care of Thomas Markle.

One burly, wily ex Household Cavalry guard sitting outside Mr Markle’s front door all day - and none of the chaos that followed may have happened. Or why not just fly him to London a month early – it’s not like Kensington Palace doesn’t have enough bedrooms?

Surely both Harry and Meghan must have known he’d be subjected to intense media scrutiny? Yet they did nothing to help him, leaving the former Hollywood lighting director to face the cameras himself for the first time like the proverbial rabbit in headlights.

I still find this failure to protect him incomprehensible, just as I find it weird that Meghan’s mother Doria had to go to the wedding entirely alone, that Harry STILL hasn’t met his father-in-law, that Meghan STILL hasn’t visited her father since his heart attack, and that Prince Charles has had NO contact with Thomas Markle despite taking his daughter down the aisle.

But hey, all families are a bit weird – right?

I believe Thomas when he says his motivation to do the staged photos was more about improving his dishevelled image than money.

(Just as I believe his motivation for appearing on Good Morning Britain today for his first ever TV interview was more about setting the record straight than the relatively small fee we paid him.)

There had been a steady flow of pictures of him looking like an overweight, unshaven, beer-swilling vagrant. Who wouldn’t be tempted to try to create a more positive ‘look’ for themselves in the run-up to starring in the biggest wedding of the year?

I also believe him when he says he only wants the best for Meghan and Harry. Thomas Markle strikes me as a man who genuinely loves his daughter, and thinks Harry’s the really lucky one to have landed his ‘little Princess’.

Of course, there will be some who think he should have kept his mouth shut, just as I did in the run-up to the wedding.

But that was then, and this is now.

After all the feverish speculation, rumour and gossip surrounding the chaotic furore of that week, it was good to hear the truth from the horse’s mouth – told in a soft, thoughtful manner that most of our viewers seemed to find endearing and sincere.

The Palace, which had no prior knowledge of our interview, will have gone into spasms of horror that Thomas revealed Harry’s views on Donald Trump and Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

After all, the royals are trained to never give their political opinions about anything.

But Harry’s views – according to Thomas, he’s ‘open to the Brexit experiment’ and thinks President Trump should be ‘given a chance’ - seem more diplomatic than especially controversial.

If I were the Palace, and Meghan and Harry for that matter, I would bite my tongue and try to see Thomas Markle’s interview in the way he intended it to be: a candid, honest account of what it’s been like to live through the blazing firestorm of life as a first time father-of-a-royal-bride.

None of us is perfect, and none of us would survive such intense scrutiny unscathed or without doing a few silly things along the way.

I don’t doubt Thomas’s sincerity when he says he did what he thought was the right thing at the time.

It wasn’t, and as he freely admits now, he’ll now have to live with that for the rest of his life.

But any man who, as Thomas Markle does, travels to Los Angeles each year to place flowers on his ex wife Doria’s doorstep on Mother’s Day is not a bad man.

In fact, after today’s interview, I’ve come to the conclusion he’s a thoroughly honourable, decent man who is understandably struggling to make sense of a crazy new existence that was entirely of someone else’s making - albeit someone he loves very dearly.

He’s also having to do it with barely any support.

I congratulate him on his courageous candour today, and wish him well with his recovery.

As for his future as a royal father-in-law, I simply say this: good luck Thomas – you’ll need it!

This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is reproduced here with permission.