So, when does the dirt on Meghan come out?

"This is only hearsay, but in London a Brit socialite who knew her way around money, Europe, royalty told me - and my companion, so I wasn't alone in hearing this - that Meghan was known in the old days. 'She was around the famous playgrounds Europeans visit...and known to be shopping for a rich husband.'"

That's a quote from Cindy Adams in yesterday's New York Post. Cindy is old - so old that she interviewed the original Duchess of Windsor.

"Who was also American," writes Cindy. "She was not happy afterward. She was tough. I interviewed her. She was constantly looking to negotiate some sort of financial betterment."

So, when does the dirt start coming out? How about now.

Who will drop the information?

We've had more than 1200 comments since the Sussex summit on Monday, so please allow me to repeat part of my answer to a question hidden somewhere within that forest of text.

A regular commenter asked for my input on how and when some of the nasty info on Meg might come out.

 In addition to items on the popular blind gossip sites (CDAN, Blind Gossip), tweets from royal reporters and other British journalists, and insider postings on blogs like this one and LSA, the foreign press is one to watch.

 Yesterday I thought of the Germans (Bild?) and the French in particular, with the Australians as a long shot, but Cindy didn't occur to me. 

 She's a good choice because she's got an established reputation (as one should when one is 89 years old) and nothing to lose. She doesn't need or want access to Wills and Kate. 

And her employer, Rupert Murdoch, is currently being sued by Prince Harry for phone hacking. 

Don't make Meg the victim

Reporters, particularly UK reporters, know the dirt, probably much more than we know. But there's a delicate balance - nobody wants to make Meg look like the victim and create public sympathy for her. 

And the UK press still needs access to the Royals, so they won't be first on anything that might isn't secretly approved by the family or isn't be timed to serve the family interests.

Besides, unpublished stories can serve as a counterweight to whatever Meg might want to release on the BRF, and Meg may have been told so directly. 

"If we see anything in public about Royal Family Member X's eating disorder, then we'll release the story about you yachting. Release that piece about Royal Family Member Y's private dinner with Tommy Robinson, and we release the videotape of you shouting racial insults at Melissa Toubati."

We are shocked, shocked!

If stories about Meg do come out, the BRF will profess to be horrified by this awful invasion of privacy, even though the material may have been supplied by the BRF through an intermediary. 

The UK press will gleefully cover both the leak and the BRF's pretend shock, while generating as many clicks (and paper copies) as possible. They have financial targets to meet. 

A good example of how the BRF works with the British media is the story released to Richard Kay on Sunday January 12, when the world was focused on the Sussexes, about Princess Beatrice and her fiancé Edo.

"The new year hasn't brought a change of luck for Princess Beatrice and her wedding plans," Kay reported. "New woes are brewing for Bea, 31, and Edo Mapelli Mozzi - and this time it's all to do with the presence of his ex, Dara Huang."

Two days later, Enty ran a blind item: "This offspring of a royal pedophile continues to be cheated on by her soon to be husband. There is even buzz he got an ex pregnant during one of their many visits together".

The story behind the story

Looks like everyone in the British press has known for a long time that Edo and his ex were still knocking boots. The courtiers could see that a wedding date announcement was coming up sometime in January, so they gave Richard Kay at the DM the green light for a euphemistic story about how Dara was still "cutting his hair and buying his clothes" and that Bea had "returned from working in New York" and found they were "closer than she would like."

Richard Kay wasn't given the OK to write the pregnancy rumor, but he or someone else at the DM passed it on to Enty for a blind, knowing it would circulate among people like us. 

Anyway, looks like the wedding is off, and it was important for the RF to explain the real reason before the announcement of "different schedules" or some such nonsense. 

And Richard Kay has been given the kind of exclusive tidbit that rewards Royal reporters for holding back other, as-yet-unapproved information.

Let's see what's next.