AMANDA PLATELL: Meghan’s bizarre vegetable haul has made me realise something utterly shocking… we are the fools, and she’s the Machiavellian mastermind

My eyes were on stalks watching a beatific and spotlessly clean Meghan Sussex in her latest video showing off the ‘home-grown’ vegetables from the garden at her $29million Californian mansion.

With a cute picture of her beagle Mia sniffing the produce she posted: ‘The unofficial quality inspector of this morning’s garden haul.’

A pristine wicker basket was laden with lettuce, squash and broccoli, carrots, corn, red peppers and onions.

Not a spot of mud to be seen even though they had seemingly been gathered by Meghan’s fair hand from the ground. And such variety – an extraordinary accomplishment seeing that some of the veg is apparently out of season.

One social media user posted: ‘Huh. She’s so good at gardening she can grow all things from all seasons at once’. Others said it’s too early to harvest corn at this time of year, though the California Farmland Trust says it can be picked from June to September.

All this, too, when she was pictured wearing her precious engagement ring with diamonds that once belonged to Harry’s mother Princess Diana. I mean, who gets their hands dirty digging in the veg patch wearing family heirlooms?

Well, being the kid charged with collecting veg from my family’s garden next to the chicken keep, I can tell you that onions and carrots come up covered in muck. Lettuce is half devoured by slugs.

The vegetables aren’t ever perfect shapes like these ones – little wonder some commentators have said Mrs Sussex must have nipped out to the posh local supermarket to fill her trug.

Meghan’s recent Instagram post featured her dog ‘inspecting’ her ‘home-grown’ garden produce, which seemed remarkably dirt-free

With Love, Meghan saw Mrs Sussex opening her home for the cameras… though it was actually filmed in a nearby rented multi-million-pound property

As for her hapless hubby Harry, Meghan has posted pictures at her desk saying that’s where she and Harry work from home – though I notice there isn’t a Spare chair, writes Amanda Platell

Which left me wondering. Is Meghan so Machiavellian she’s just having a laugh at our expense?

Is she taking us all for fools, cynically aware we will scrutinise every image she posts, knowing a video of her brandishing ‘just-picked’ out-of-season broccoli and sweetcorn will garner headlines.

After all, here we are poring over every last detail of her ‘garden haul’. Analysing, in addition to the veg, the massive basket of long white roses she claims she picked, each of them long-stemmed, immaculate blooms without any common or garden blemish.

Does she quietly accept that the more ridiculous she is – pretending, for example, in one video she and daughter Lilibet were harvesting honey from their hives when we know from an earlier clip it was all done by the local beekeeper – the more likely she is to keep our attention and the Netflix millions coming in?

Could it be that Netflix are also in on the act – and believe she’s broadcasting gold because she’s the woman people love to ridicule endlessly and she’s prepared to play the part?

It is possible, of course, that Meghan is so deluded that she really thinks we won’t notice she comes across as a fake. Possible, too, that she doesn’t believe the polls showing her royal popularity ratings have plummeted so low she’s hovering only just above disgraced Prince Andrew.

But isn’t she an intelligent woman? She can’t surely be that deluded.

I’d suggest instead that, as hapless Harry’s star wanes and he shows no sign of bringing in the millions, she’s decided that being ridiculed is her road to riches.

The Italian Renaissance philosopher Machiavelli was a pragmatist who argued that leaders should use whatever means necessary to cling on to power and who said: ‘It is better to be feared then loved, if you cannot do both.’

Machiavellian Meghan has adapted that philosophy and concluded: ‘It is better to be mocked than loved, if you cannot do both.’ And she’s calculatedly and unashamedly chosen worldwide derision – on this occasion with her spotlessly perfect veg – to keep the Netflix millions pouring in.