There are plenty of legitimate reasons to shave a few years off your age. Sportsmen do it all the time for example. Cockburn did it in a bar last week.
But if you’re in the public eye, are known for not being particularly popular and are estranged from your fame-hungry family, it’s possible that you’d raise suspicions if doing so. Meghan Markle has recently been accused of lying about her age as she celebrated her forty-second birthday on August 4.
The conspiracy arose on the internet, as all the best ones do. A YouTube video viewed tens of thousands of times claims that the duchess is actually several years older.
“The court papers filed by her sister state Meghan was born in 1977,” the narrator says. “Meghan also revealed her true age before in her other court case in London in 2021.”
The video quotes a Twitter message which it says refers to Meghan as “Pinocchio”: “OMG. You do realize that she’s revealed her true age. Pinocchio has stated in the document you have shown that she was two years old when Samantha was fifteen years old when she moved to the other side of town. Which means there is a thirteen-year-gap between them. Samantha, born November 1964, is fifty-seven years old today. Pinocchio is thirteen years younger. That little slip up revelation means Pinocchio is forty-four years old. Gotcha!”
“People believe she’s lying about her age so she doesn’t seem too much older than her husband who’s thirty-eight. Is it possible that Meghan Markle is forty-five years old? In theory it could be because she has enough money to pull off a lie like that.”
It isn’t clear where the video’s claim about Samantha Markle disputing Meghan’s age has come from, since Markle’s book The Diary of Princess Pushy’s Sister gives Meghan’s date of birth as August 1981, though she does put a different date.
The book reads: “The Great Migration of 1632 brought our early ancestors to the United States from England on the Mayflower, and the Ship Lyon, but the great migration of genes brought the Ship Meghan Flower to dock at our house on August 31, 1981. My baby sister was biracial, beautiful and was both the color of a peach and a rose.”
Newsweek conducted a fact check on the claims, coming to the conclusion that they were false, but stating that Meghan has previously “slightly confused” the age gap with her siblings in emails to her former communications secretary Jason Knauf. “She initially implies the existence of a thirteen-year age gap between her and Samantha and fifteen years between her and Tom Jr. before later stating there was a sixteen-year age gap.”
Meghan did once previously reveal that she was told to lie about her age for an advantage in acting auditions. In 2015, she claimed, “I think that as women actors, the industry can assume they have a shelf life.
“I’m always told, ‘Don’t say your age’. I’m thirty-three and I’m really comfortable with that. I think if anyone has a problem then it’s their problem, not mine.
“I think in television, you are seeing a shift of women who are not in their twenties who play strong women.”
It wouldn’t be the first time stars have been accused of fibbing about their ages for competitive advantage. Danny Almonte became a national sensation when he threw a perfect game in the 2001 Little League World Series. It later transpired that his parents had knocked two years off his age when they emigrated to the US, meaning he was fourteen at the time of his triumph, too old for Little League.
With rumors swirling that Meghan Markle is gearing up for a political career, Cockburn suggests adding on a few years, if not decades, for an advantage.
