With Love, Meghan: Waitrose shoppers 233 per cent more interested in sparkling water since watching show

Those most often nourished by Meghan Markle — sorry, she goes by “Sussex” now — are the media, who feast upon her failures with relish. Her latest project, With Love, Meghan, has, like those before it, been widely ridiculed, though criticism has been somewhat less cruel than usual. There is a sense of it being a little too easy, a little too much, like shooting fish in a barrel. Not that there has been a complete ceasefire: “will this series fly? For laughs perhaps,” pondered the Standard’s Melanie McDonagh.

The Duchess’s show is something like a lifestyle magazine come to life: it is a guide to hosting the Montecito way. It is a show of brown labels and glass jars, of fruit displayed in a rainbow and lavender on the towels. Is it inane and insufferably twee (at one point she says “goodnight, sweetheart” as she puts a cake in the oven)? Of course. But it appears the public are viewing it with a less cynical eye, and some may be taking Meghan’s advice to heart.

In fact, according to Waitrose, since the show began airing on Netflix, their website has seen some huge rises in interest in particular ingredients. According to the supermarket — the Standard has no way of verifying it — there has been fresh interest in everything from edible flowers to bruschetta.

Some of these rises are perhaps more telling than others. There has been a 3200% upping of searches for truffle salt, for instance, though one wonders how many people were really looking for it before. On the other hand, honey — ever popular — has spike 49 per cent, suggesting the show really has had an impact. Other items also seeing a rise include edible flowers and crudites, both up a whopping 200 per cent, “assorted fruit platter”, up 33 per cent, “microwave popcorn”, a rise of 200 per cent, and bath salts, fizzing up by 65 per cent. Somewhat curiously, searches for sparkling water also risen by 233 per cent. Had viewers not come across sparkling water before?

The full list of items With Love, Meghan, has had an impact on is below: