Prince Harry Is ‘Pretty Damn Normal, All Things Considered,’ According to Friend

Harry, who turns 40 on Sept. 15, and wife Meghan Markle are “a pretty ordinary couple existing in an absolutely extraordinary situation,” Bryony Gordon writes

A friend of Prince Harry’s is speaking out ahead of his 40th birthday.

The Duke of Sussex will turn the milestone age on Sept. 15, and Bryony Gordon of the Daily Mail is speaking out about her friend ahead of his big day, calling him “pretty damn normal.”

Gordon wrote that she became friends with the royal about eight years ago, “and ever since, life has been peppered with questions from people curious to know more about his character,” she wrote in a piece published Sept. 12.

“And when I tell them my honest opinion, that he is kind, funny and pretty damn normal, all things considered, I often see a flash of disappointment cloud their faces, followed quickly by words to the effect of ‘well, you would say that, you know him,’ as if knowing someone should disqualify you from having a trusted opinion about them,” she continued.

She added, “I’ve heard a lot of fairly negative things said about him, character assassinations that bear no resemblance to the man I’ve come to count as a friend, the one who cares passionately about injured veterans, and who’s done more than most to change perceptions of mental health in this country,” referring to the UK.

Related: Prince Harry Reveals the 'Best Gift' He’s Ever Received Ahead of 40th Birthday (Exclusive)

Gordon became friends with Prince Harry in 2016 — the same year he met now-wife Meghan Markle, though Gordon met him a couple of months prior. The royal and Gordon met when Prince Harry, along with Prince William and Kate Middleton, launched their mental health campaign Heads Together. Gordon asked him to be the first guest on the mental health podcast she was about to launch, Bryony Gordon’s Mad World, and “to my surprise, he said yes,” she wrote. “Even more surprising was the honesty that poured out of him as we recorded the podcast in Kensington Palace.”

She added, “He was nervous about what he wanted to tell me — nervous enough that I found myself trying to calm and reassure him. But there was good reason for his anxiety. At the time, the royals were not known for anything other than a stiff upper lip. It was not the done thing for them to talk about their feelings.”

Harry opened up to Gordon — who affectionately calls him “Haz” — about the grief surrounding the death of his mother, Princess Diana, following a car accident in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997.

“I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had quite a serious effect on not only my personal life, but my work as well,” Harry told Gordon at the time the podcast episode aired in April 2017. “It was 20 years of not thinking about it, and then two years of total chaos.”

Gordon wrote she never expected to hear from Harry again, but she did, and the two kept in touch through various mental health projects. In early 2018, not long after their engagement and before their May wedding that year, Gordon met Meghan, “whom I have also come to count as a friend, meeting for lunch and working with her as she got behind charitable causes in the UK,” Gordon wrote.

Gordon visited their then-home, Frogmore Cottage, in Windsor, and was with them at Buckingham Palace the day they left the UK in 2020. As Harry prepared to publish his memoir, Spare, in January 2023, Gordon traveled to their home in Montecito, California, to interview him.

“I spent an afternoon at the house, the kids [Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet] running around happily as we drank tea,” Gordon wrote. “Harry proudly showed me the DIY photo wall he’d recently created, featuring pictures of his mum.”

When she left, Gordon did so with a jar of their homemade jam, “which I then left in the back of a taxi in a jet-lagged stupor,” she wrote. “Somewhere in Los Angeles, a cab driver has one of the earliest batches of American Riviera Orchard’s produce.”

Of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as a couple, Gordon described them as “a pretty ordinary couple existing in an absolutely extraordinary situation,” she wrote. “There are no airs or graces with them, no desire to do anything other than protect their children from an increasingly digital world that likes nothing more than seeing the worst in people. A world that forgets that no matter how high profile a person is, they’re just doing their best, like everyone else.”

She added, “This is not what people want to hear, but it is what I’ve found, time and time again.”

Related: Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Have Been 'Reluctant' to Show Archie and Lilibet Publicly (Exclusive)

Prince Harry exclusively tells PEOPLE ahead of his 40th birthday that his priority remains fatherhood. “The best gift I’ve ever been given is, without doubt, my kids,” Harry says via his spokesperson. “I enjoy watching them grow every single day and love being their dad.”

A friend previously told PEOPLE, “Harry has been reluctant to show his children publicly, not out of a desire to hide them but to protect their privacy and safety from potential threats,” they said. “He wants them to lead as normal a life as possible without the fear of kidnapping or harm.”

The friend added, “As a dad and husband, Harry is determined to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.”

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For his big birthday this weekend, PEOPLE previously reported that Prince Harry planned to celebrate with Meghan, 43, Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3, followed by a gathering with close friends internationally.

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