Piers Morgan: If you're truly a humanitarian, Meghan, show your father some heart

Meghan Markle is a humanitarian.

We know this because she never stops telling us.

Indeed, her official Kensington Palace royal website is laced with copious details of her devotion to charitable work.

I had first-hand experience of how important this work is to her when we met in my local pub just before she started dating Harry.

"The thing I am most proud of in my life is my humanitarian work," Meghan told me that night.

Her eyes radiated with joy and excitement as she talked about a recent trip she had made to Rwanda for the United Nations. "I have never felt as happy as I did on that trip. I was doing something meaningful, to help people less fortunate than me."

These words were very laudable and came from someone who struck me that night as a very nice, warm, genuine person.

A few weeks after we met, Meghan penned an article for Elle magazine in which she explained that she got her caring side from her mother and father, Doria and Thomas.

"My parents came from little," she wrote, "so they made a choice to give a lot: buying turkeys for homeless shelters at Thanksgiving, delivering meals to people at hospices, giving spare change to those asking for it. It's what I was used to seeing, so it's what I grew up being: a young adult with a social conscience, to do what I could do and speak up when I knew something was wrong."

So yes, Meghan sees herself very definitely as a humanitarian, and credits her parents with instilling that virtue in her.

This photo of Meghan Markle's dad preparing himself for her wedding has killed me pic.twitter.com/6jcczySbkD

— habibti please (@jennineak) May 12, 2018

The dictionary definition of "humanitarian" is: "Concerned with, or seeking to promote human welfare."

Humanitarians are further described as "compassionate, humane, unselfish, altruistic, generous, magnanimous, benevolent, merciful, kind, good, sympathetic."

So how, exactly, does all that tally with the way Meghan is now treating her own father?

Thomas Markle is not a well man.

He had heart surgery to fix a blocked aorta, in the week of his daughter Meghan's wedding to Prince Harry back in May.

And in the past couple of weeks I'm told he has been feeling rough again and is in regular contact with doctors near his home in Mexico.

Thomas has been on blood thinning drugs since his operation that give him persistent nosebleeds.

His poor health has apparently been exacerbated by feelings of extreme loneliness and sadness brought on by what appears to be sudden total estrangement from Meghan.

To put it bluntly, the man is suffering from a broken heart in every sense of that phrase.

Since the furore in the build-up to the wedding, he's had just one brief conversation with her the day after the marriage – and there has been stony silence ever since.

That's seven weeks of nothing, from a daughter who he loves and adores, and with whom he used to have very regular contact until she married into the British Royal Family.

Mr Markle didn't attend the royal wedding. Photo / AP

She didn't even send him a Father's Day card or message, which particularly hurt him because she's always done so in the past.

Indeed, just two weeks before we met in my pub in June 2016, ironically a few hundred yards from Kensington Palace, Meghan posted an Instagram photo of her and Thomas entitled "Happy Father's Day".

She wrote: "Thanks for my work ethic, my love of Busby Berkeley films & club sandwiches, for teaching me the importance of handwritten thank you notes, and for giving me that signature Markle nose. I love you."

This was a woman who clearly loved her father.

Now she can't bring herself to even talk to the man, let alone get on a plane to see how he is after his heart surgery.

"I haven't talked with Meghan and Harry in a long time, I think they're shot of me," heartbroken Thomas is reported to have told friends.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during Trooping The Colour. Photo / Getty Images

Three weeks ago, Thomas gave his first ever TV interview to Good Morning Britain, the daily show in England that I co-present with Susanna Reid.

It was plain to me, and most who watched it, that he's a nice, normal, humble guy who has badly struggled to deal with the stresses and strain of his daughter becoming one of the most famous women on earth.

He's made some mistakes along the way, notably his decision to collude with paparazzi over photographs, but he's admitted to them and explained he's had no help with the media onslaught that hit him.

Thomas wept as he spoke of the agony of missing her wedding, and of how desperate he is to see her again and to finally meet her husband.

Meghan's response to this emotional outpouring has been to completely blank him.

No calls, no emails, no texts, no Father's Day card, no nothing.

Meghan is showing every sign of now doing to her own father what she has done to her ex-husband, and countless friends and family members – sending them to the ice cold relationship equivalent of Siberia.

This, remember, is a woman who had just one member of her entire family to her wedding.

Of course, families can be difficult. We all know that.

I'm sure Meghan was annoyed by the paparazzi photo scandal, by Thomas's failure to make the wedding, and by his decision to speak to the media since.

But the poor man's been left to swing in the wind on his own 6,000 miles away while she's been embraced and protected by the vast army of Palace staff.

It's been a busy summer so far for the new Duchess of Sussex.

She'd had lots of glamorous occasions and parties to attend including the polo and doubtless very soon, Wimbledon tennis to see her friend Serena Williams.

Meanwhile, her ailing dad is on his own back in Mexico, suffering – and there's no sign his "humanitarian" daughter gives a damn about him.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex during Trooping The Colour. Photo / Getty Images

I think it's absolutely extraordinary Meghan hasn't been to see him since his surgery seven weeks ago, particularly as he is now having fresh health issues.

I think it's ridiculous she's never introduced him to Harry.

And I think it's bizarre that Thomas has had ZERO contact with Prince Charles, the man who walked his daughter down the aisle.

Meghan Markle is now a very privileged woman who has married into unimaginable wealth.

She prides herself on her charity work, yet seems to have forgotten that old truism: charity begins at home.

It's time she took off her diamond-studded tiara for a moment and remembered who she is and how she got here.

And Prince Harry should step up too; this is a man who constantly urges us all to take care of loved ones with mental health issues, yet where is now when his own father-in-law is in such dire emotional straits?

If he or the Palace is actively encouraging all or any of this "distancing", then Meghan should tell them very firmly her father comes first.

Thomas Markle didn't ask for any of this, and he doesn't deserve to be spurned by his daughter in this manner.

Meghan, I urge you to do the right thing and prove you really ARE a humanitarian by helping your dad in his hour of need – before it's too late.