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When I first read Jason Arday’s amazing life story, I had a strange sense of deja vu.

A poor kid from a tough background, misunderstood, met with scorn – but always knowing inside that they were destined for great things... where had I heard it all before?

Then I remembered: Meghan Markle! A ‘latchkey kid’, she called herself, raised on ‘TV-tray dinners’. Who ‘never Googled’ Prince Harry before their first date.

In fact, Meghan had enjoyed a private education paid for by her Emmy-winning dad Thomas. She had posed in front of Buckingham Palace as a teenager, too.

Jason, of course, was born to Ghanaian immigrants and claims he was mute as a boy. He then became Cambridge’s youngest black professor while raising millions for charity, achieving superhuman sporting feats and beating health problems that would have defeated a lesser man along the way. Sadly, of course, much of his story has since unravelled – and this week he resigned.

Jason Arday, formerly a professor at University of Cambridge who resigned amid public controversy about plagiarism and misrepresentation

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who called herself a ‘latchkey kid’ raised on ‘TV-tray dinners’ and who ‘never Googled’ Prince Harry before their first date, writes Amanda Platell

But the similarities between Megs and Jase go beyond exaggerating their early struggles. It’s clear that both of them wanted money and fame. Meghan did anything to get herself on TV, including a stint as a ‘briefcase girl’ on the US version of Deal Or No Deal, before she married someone guaranteed to keep her in the news for the rest of her life.

Jason, meanwhile, boasted he was offered ‘1.4million’ for his memoir, out later this month.

In a normal world, Jason – with his two GCSEs and a degree in PE and education studies – would be a PE teacher, while Meghan would be a bit-part TV actress. Yet both refused to accept the hand that fate and talent had dealt them.

Of course, Meghan is too smart to have peddled the elaborate fantasies Jason concocted – running 600 miles in six days, or appearing in a BBC documentary that aired years before he was born. But I’d say these narcissists still have a remarkable amount in common.

Despite his hard-won knighthood, their £16million yacht, their recent billionaire status and 27 joyous – and I’m sure faithful – years of marriage, Dave and Vic Beckham stroll around St Tropez looking miserable. What’s all that fame and fortune for if not happiness?

Foxy Knoxy's tasteless cash grab

As Amanda Knox’s tasteless ‘comedy turn’ at the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off, the sister of her murdered friend Meredith Kercher says: ‘I cannot fathom how rape and murder can be laughed about.’

Foxy Knoxy claims the show is about ‘motherhood’ and insists Meredith would find it funny. One day, she’ll have to tell her children what happened in Italy. I bet they reply: ‘Mum, how could you think it was OK to cash in on a friend’s murder?’

American author and stand-up comedian Amanda Knox at the Variety Power of Women awards in Beverly Hills, California, last October

Rod will be missed

Shockingly sad to hear of the death of columnist and broadcaster Rod Liddle at the age of 66.

Our paths often crossed, and the last time I met him, I joked that I hated him. When he asked why, I confessed that every time I read one of his brilliant columns, I knew mine paled into insignificance.

He will be sorely missed by his millions of readers – and especially so by his wife Alicia and his children. A truly irreplaceable man.

As the plague of flies continues, I need to correct the record. We Aussies do not call them ‘filth flies’, as some have said; we call them ‘blowies’ (as in blow flies) or ‘Louie’, after a famous 1957 insecticide ad campaign: ‘Louie the fly, straight from rubbish tip to you’. We just ignored these pests and the health risks.

Once, a massive blowie fell into my Sunday lunch gravy, and my dad said: ‘Don’t tell your brothers, they’ll both want one.’

And, yes, we all survived.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor describes in court the terrifying day that a homeless, masked stalker named Alex Jenkinson chased the ex-prince’s car around Sandringham.

Sad: it’s probably the closest anyone has wanted to be to Andy in years.

A lad of 12, caught lighting wildfires in a nature reserve a few hundred yards from a Leeds housing estate, has been ‘reprimanded’ but not charged. Is that really enough when it is widely believed that children who light fires are far more likely to commit future crimes?

Gigi's love language

Rumour has it actor Bradley Cooper, 51, has secretly wed his model girlfriend Gigi Hadid, 31.

Last year, Gigi babbled: ‘Getting to the point where knowing what you want and deserve in a relationship is essential. And then to find someone that is in a place in their life where they know what they want... And you both do work separately to come together.’

What unutterable gobbledygook, but that’s what you get, Brad, when you marry a millennial.

Gigi Hadid walks the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show runway in a pink set with a dramatic floral cape in New York last October

I would never condone the demonstrators attacking homes in Thetford, Norfolk, being occupied by asylum seekers.

But is it any wonder that folk despair? A nearby ex-military barracks has been earmarked to take 1,250 young male migrants – and this in an area classified as one of the most deprived in the county. Andy Burnham needs to stop pretending Labour’s plan ‘is working’ – and start sending people back.

++Westminster Wars++

• PM Andy’s record so far. He vowed to work tirelessly ‘for us’ every day, then traipses back up north one day a week and takes a holiday 15 days into the job.
• He says his is the party for women and girls – as 9,300 domestic abusers are set to be released early from prison by 2029.
• He promises to look again at releasing criminals from prison early, and then does nothing to stop PC Andrew Harper’s disgusting killers from serving a fraction of their sentences. My verdict? A big fat F.

What’s not to love about Tom Holland and Zendaya’s modest (by A-lister standards) £500,000 wedding, with 250 guests, at the Beaverbrook estate in Surrey, just 11 miles from his childhood home?

Compare that with Taylor Swift’s £20million nuptials for 1,000 guests at Madison Square Garden in New York.

My spidey senses tell me Tom and Zendaya will live happily ever after.

Tom Holland and Zendaya attend the Spider-Man: Brand New Day UK Premiere at the Odeon Luxe in London on July 29

Ted Lasso has lost the plot

Ted Lasso, once a phenomenal and heart-warming show, has returned to Apple TV to mixed reviews. One critic described it as ‘limping along like an ageing striker’. I planned to watch it until I learned the new series is about a women’s football team. Sorry to the Sisterhood, but I instantly deleted it from my watch list.