Prince Harry has not been seen smoking in public for a long time, as he is reported to be in the process of kicking his nicotine habit after pressures from his fiancée Meghan Markle in the weeks leading up to their wedding, and yet, French President Emmanuel Macron has announced his plans to give the Royal a “James Bond cigarette lighter” as a wedding gift. A 007 lighter sounds neat, but it does also reek of tacky – and it can be said to be a strange gift for something who’s quitting smoking and therefore won’t need it by the time he is given it.
The upcoming royal wedding and the announcement of the guest list have begun to beg questions of what kind of gift you can buy a man who has everything. This is Prince Harry we’re talking about – he’s not short of stuff – and all of the guests who have been invited are now tasked with figuring out what to get him as a wedding present. But even with those limited options, a cigarette lighter for a guy who just quit smoking. The smoking aspect is less of what Macron was thinking of in choosing the gift – what he really had in mind was the James Bond-branded aspect of it.
And it’s not just a cigarette lighter – the lighter is part of a “collection” of James Bond-themed gifts that the President of France will be giving to Prince Harry in honour of his wedding celebrations.
Macron had heard that Harry was “a 007 fan,” apparently, so the James Bond collection of products that is offered by the French firm ST Dupont has been chosen as his wedding gift from the French President. The company’s PR team in London were “delighted” to make the announcement that their products would be making their way into the hands of royalty.
The 007 collection includes other smoking accessories and cuff links
The ST Dupont 007 Collection, which is the official name of the product that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be receiving to celebrate their nuptial ceremony, is the main one of several gifts that the couple will be given by French officials. The collection is a box that contains a golden lighter, a cigar cutter, a couple of pens (which are just regular pens and haven’t been fitted with any hidden gadgets by Q), and some cuff links.
They all bear the James Bond film franchise’s logo and have been sorted in the box to look like a gun.
The reason why the lighter won’t be much use to Prince Harry is that Markle has convinced her royal husband-to-be to give up smoking completely (his favourite brand was formerly reported to be Marlboro Lights, so their marketing team will be sad to see the free advertisement go up in – pardon the pun – smoke). The idea behind the health kick is to give him the body of a “soldier” again by the time that the wedding day rolls around. Perhaps the French President had not been informed that Harry had quit smoking, or maybe he didn’t even know whether he did or didn’t smoke at all and just based his gift decision on the fact that the Prince likes James Bond and it’s a James Bond-themed French-made product.
The wedding is dated for next Saturday
The royal wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is fast approaching, with the actual date of the event imminent. It will take place on the grounds of Windsor Castle at St. George’s Chapel – the same place where Harry was christened as a baby – next Saturday, on the 19th of May. Officials from the anti-monarchy activist group Republic will attend the sidelines of the wedding in order to protest it, and they have reported in a press release that they will be joined in their protest by republican MPs Tommy Sheppard and Emma Dent Coad, but this shouldn’t disrupt the proceedings too much.
