Daniel Martin has become such a good friend of the Duchess of Sussex that he made repeated appearance on her lifestyle show With Love, Meghan. It has left some critics bemused.
My colleague Jan Moir, for example, described the American make-up artist as ‘charisma-free’, saying of Martin’s starring role in the second series of the Netflix show: ‘Here he chops vegetables, repeats everything Meghan says and makes too many references to his diminutive size.
‘“This is too small for my big manly hands,” he notes. “Mine is small and mighty,” he says of his flower creation.’
Moir continued: ‘One can see Meghan’s malignant influence as the show’s executive producer here, because in the real world, any television executive worth their salt flakes would have said “for God’s sake, lose the weird bald guy”.
‘Yet here is Daniel again, prowling around the kitchen like a damp pink blancmange, a pal whose friendship with Meghan does not make him interesting.’
Now, Martin, 52, has discovered that however close you are to the American former actress, and however much you lavish praise on her domestic skills on camera, you are never far from disaster.
Last week, he posted a video on social media about his trip to France with Meghan. In it he explained how he had achieved her look for the Balenciaga show at Paris Fashion Week, which the duchess had asked to attend in support of the brand’s latest creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli.
Martin claimed that his work had ‘made her look even more juicy and glowy’.
Daniel Martin made regular appearances on With Love, Meghan
He said: ‘We just wanted to keep everything light, fresh, and radiant. She just flew in, and your skin gets dehydrated from the plane, so I just wanted to bring some hydration back into her skin and just bring some life to it.’
He then concluded: ‘I would love to get her in a lip [lipstick] one day, Meghan if you’re watching this, let’s do a lip, I’d love to see you in a lip.’
However, earlier this week Martin deleted the post, leading to speculation that the duchess may not have been best pleased with what he had said.
Martin’s spokesman declined to comment but a source close to Meghan told me on Monday that Martin had removed the video because he had failed to refer to all the beauty products used on the trip.
The source suggested that an updated version of the video was likely to be posted at a later date. Three days later, no such video has been posted.
Even if Martin does eventually share an updated video, he will have learnt a valuable lesson: that ‘friendship’ with Meghan involves doing what the duchess wants. Or, as her husband Prince Harry is said to have once put it to Angela Kelly, dresser to his grandmother Queen Elizabeth: ‘What Meghan wants, Meghan gets.’
Martin has been a friend of King Charles’s daughter-in-law since he did her make-up on cable television drama Suits.
Martin posted on sical media about doing Meghan’s make-up in Paris
And he has become one of her most outspoken defenders, taking to social media to attack her critics in the most personal way after the first series of With Love, Meghan was broadcast.
One Instagram user, Maria Sampson, a London-based fashion design student, commented on an article about the first episode, in which Meghan prepared bath salts for Martin’s stay at her home.
‘It’s got to the point where you just have to laugh now,’ Sampson remarked.
At this, Martin, who did Meghan’s make-up before her royal wedding, took grave offence. In response, he mocked Ms Sampson’s fashion designs, which she displays on her Instagram page.
‘Like your ‘designs’??’ he jeered, adding that Ms Sampson didn’t have the status to dare comment on Meghan’s handiwork. ‘Don’t come for my friend without receipts…’ he warned, melodramatically.
Martin did not confine his extraordinary efforts to defend and celebrate her to just one form of social media.
On Meta’s Threads, he responded to a random question about who was responsible for the music used in With Love, Meghan. ‘It’s all Meghan!’ Martin declared. ‘She’s the superstar DJ.’
Martin is not the first person to apparently incur Meghan’s displeasure, of course, as former best friend Jessica Mulroney knows all too well. As the daughter-in-law of Canada’s former prime minister Brian Mulroney, Jessica had the connections to introduced ambitious Meghan to the country’s high society. The actress was living in Toronto, where Suits was filmed, at the time.
So close was Jessica to Meghan that her sons, Brian and John, served as page boys at the Windsor wedding.
However, their closeness appeared to end abruptly after Jessica was involved in an acrimonious row with black ‘influencer’ Sasha Exeter over the Black Lives Matter movement. Ms Exeter accused her of ‘white privilege’.
Mild-mannered Martin is most unlikely ever to have seemingly upset Meghan, but he clearly needs to watch his step if he is to avoid further antagonising his most prominent friend and client.