DIANA WENT FOR a swim in the pool at the British
Ambassador’s
official residence in Cairo, where she was staying. Swimming
helped her
clear her head, and in May 1992 she had a lot on her mind. Climbing
out
of the pool, she wrapped a towel around her shoulders and said,
‘Ken, if
anything happens to me you’ll let people know what I was
really like, won’t you?’ ‘Are you sure, ma’am?’
I replied lightly. ‘You’ll be taking a hell of a
risk.’ She playfully pushed me on the shoulder as if to
reprimand me for my cheek, but some serious matter was clearly
preying on her mind. She dived back into the pool and started
an energetic workout but, after only a few minutes’ crawl
and backstroke and no more than ten lengths, I spotted a glint
of reflected light from the building opposite.
Camera lens, I thought. I told the Princess
and she climbed from the
pool, wrapped a towel over her one-piece swimsuit and went back
inside. I followed her, and found that from the residence we
could see men on the roof of the building where I had seen the
flash. As they continued to take picture after picture, even
though there was now nothing of interest photograph, Diana spoke
of her feeling of total isolation. ‘Ken,’ she said
calmly, ‘I want out of this once and for all.’ I
could not help but agree with her, at least where this intrusion
into her privacy was concerned.
I was angry, however. I had identified the
building as a possible problem
during the reconnaissance that had preceded this trip, but officials
from the
British Embassy had said that there was little they could do
about it because some Egyptian in-house security staff were
easily bribed. And that is exactly what had happened. I walked
across and entered the building, playing the policeman to the
limit. When I got to the roof some of the photographers were
still there with their cameras trained on the pool. An ITN cameraman,
a freelance named Mike Lloyd, was also there, although he was
just preparing to leave. When I confronted them all they admitted
that they had bribed the guard to let them on to the roof. Although
hardly welcome, such longlens photography was to be expected
on private holidays, but most of these photographers had official
accreditation passes from the Palace to cover the royal tour
- an official tour, during which they would attend scores of
photo sessions - and I told them that their behaviour was a
blatant intrusion into the Princess’s privacy. They agreed
to leave immediately, although whether swayed by my anger, or
by their fear of losing their accreditation, I do not know.
Next morning, inevitably, the pictures appeared
in most of the British
newspapers, and ITN even ran the intrusive footage on the news.
Diana,
determined that her trip should not be trivialized, was concerned
in case
the pictures shown on British TV should offend Muslim sensitivities,
given
that they showed her in a swimsuit, and feared that they might
create a
false impression of her attitude to her official tour, following
so closely on
the row over the Duchess of York’s island-hopping holiday
in the Far East. Diana’s press aide, Dickie Arbiter, sprang
into action, issuing briefings and threatening action against
those who had snatched the pictures. He told one newspaper,
‘If the first thing people see of her in Egypt is her
swimming around in a pool, it puts her in a frivolous light.’
The principal result was that he insisted on Draconian punishment
for the offending journalists and photographers, against the
Princess’s wishes, banning them from the upcoming visit
to Korea, which turned out to be the last joint tour undertaken
by Charles and Diana.
In reality Diana had far bigger concerns than
some video footage and
a few grainy, long-lens snapshots of her lapping a swimming
pool. Andrew
Morton’s book, in which she had secretly collaborated,
was about to be
launched upon a largely unsuspecting world, and she was well
aware that
the mother of all rows would follow. Diana knew the show had
to go on
nevertheless, and she was determined not to disappoint her hostess,
the wife of Egypt’s President Mubarak. To that end, she
set about her official duties, which included a visit to a home
for blind children that moved her terribly, with a good grace
and astonishing energy.
Not for the first time, Fleet Street totally
missed the real story and traduced the Princess, printing the
swimming-pool shots rather than following her as she set about
a full program of engagements. Not only that, but they had missed
another opportunity to expose the truth. The fact that while
she was promoting British industry and her own brand of caring
abroad, her husband was on holiday in Turkey with another man’s
wife, was undoubtedly more in the public interest than a few
cheap shots of Diana in a swimsuit. Worse, before arriving in
Egypt, Diana’s flight had first landed in Turkey, where
Prince Charles left the aircraft to join a party of friends
including Camilla Parker Bowles.
Diverting to Turkey to deliver her husband
into his lover’s arms had not
only added considerable time to the Princess’s journey,
but had also increased the stress she was already under. Understandably,
she broke down in tears as, very late at night, we approached
Cairo. Somehow, though, she pulled herself together just when
she needed to, vowing not to let her ‘A’ Team’
down. Diana knew perfectly well the reason for her husband’s
trip to Turkey, but she was determined not to crack up while
she was on official duty. For that she deserves enormous credit.
Although she handled the formal side of her
duties with her usual charm
and aplomb, Diana was in a very emotional state and had to be
handled
with care. With hindsight, her tears may have had more to do
with the
impending publication of Andrew Morton’s book than with
her frustration
at her husband’s blatant infidelity. Yet for her, the
Egypt trip delivered all
that it had promised: yet another solo triumph for the Princess.
In terms
of press coverage, the visit was also a true Diana media spectacular,
which saw her agreeing to pose for photographs by the Pyramids,
the Sphinx and the breathtaking temple at Luxor, to the delight
of the hordes of pressmen. Unfortunately, the words that accompanied
the stunning photographs when they appeared in the papers were
beyond her or her assistants’ control With the greatest
secrecy, Diana had sealed her own fate and defined her future;
but I am convinced that she would not have gone ahead with the
deal with Andrew Morton and his publisher, Michael O’Mara,
had she not truly believed that she could get away with it.
In that she was right; it was only after her death that Morton
revealed that she had not only secretly collaborated in the
writing of Diana: Her True Story, but that it was she who had
approached him in the first place.
Many people had their suspicions about her
part in the project, but she
and the very few other people involved maintained their silence
until the
end. I was kept completely in the dark about the entire project
- probably
for my own good, for Diana knew if that if I had found out about
it I would have been compromised. Her decision to strike a deal
with the independent journalist, writer and former royal correspondent
Andrew Morton through her close friend, Doctor James Colthurst,
was one that she took entirely herself. She wanted to be free
of her marriage and of the stifling embrace of the Palace, and
she had come to believe that if Morton could write her version
of events, for all the world to read, then it would prove so
damning of Prince Charles and his family that they would have
no choice but to grant her, in effect, an exit visa.
It was strategy typical of Diana, naive, perhaps
even childish, but almost
brutally direct. Morton’s account proved to be a brilliant
and historic
document - and perhaps the longest divorce petition on record.
More importantly for Diana, it achieved what it set out to do
- rocking the monarchy to its foundations and freeing her from
its shackles. For the first time, too, the anonymous friends
so often cited in newspaper stories were named and quoted on
the record in the book. What infuriated the Palace and the royal
family was that it was clear that, despite her protestations,
they had at the very least spoken to Morton with Diana’s
consent and encouragement.
Diana: Her True Story broke when the first
extract of the serialization of
the book appeared in the Sunday Times on 7 June 1992. Then the
book itself was published, immediately becoming a major and
long-running bestseller. Clearly readers wanted to know about
the Princess; thanks to Morton they now knew a good deal more
than Prince Charles, the royal family and the Palace had ever
wanted them to know. This was not throwing down the gauntlet;
his was unhorsing an opponent before he had even reached for
his lance. In the weeks that followed the royal family bluntly
pointed a damning finger of blame at the Princess, but at no
stage did she buckle under pressure. She stuck to her story,
denying that she had co-operated with the book or encouraged
its author in any way. When questioned about Morton, her answer
was invariably the same: ‘I have never spoken to him.’
She was, of course, not lying. She had not given face-to-face
interviews to Morton; indeed, she never met him, but had provided
him with tapes of her thoughts and memories recorded in private
conversations with her old friend Colthurst at Kensington Palace.
The Old Etonian doctor would then deliver the tapes secretly
to the author.
When the Princess was questioned by her brother-in-law,
Sir Robert
Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary, on the question
of her collaboration with Morton, she again categorically denied
it. This led Sir Robert to tell Her Majesty that he believed
Diana was telling the truth, and that the Palace’s sole
remaining option, given that it was impossible to prove that
the book was a work of self-interest orchestrated by Diana herself,
was to go all out and attack the book, questioning Morton’s
accuracy and motives, and denigrating his sources. It was too
little, too late; the book had (and has) an authority that proved
unshakeable. Some of the Prince’s circle tried to intimate
that Diana was at best hysterical, and at worst mad, but that
too backfired. She was by now too popular, too visible, too
beautiful - as well as too important to the media - ever to
fall victim to such shabby denigration. When it later transpired
that Diana had lied to him, Fellowes offered to fall on his
sword, tendering his resignation, which the Queen, who liked
and respected him, refused to accept.
I may not have been party to the Her True Story
gunpowder plot, but I
knew that something was afoot once the project got under way
early in 1990. I have said that Diana may have wanted to keep
me in the dark for my own protection, but on reflection it seems
more likely that she knew that I would advise against such subversive
tactics, knowing that they might very well backfire spectacularly.
Throughout this time, her demeanor was sometimes that of a frightened
child who believes she may have got away with some piece of
mischief, but fears, too, that she may be caught.
Nor, I honestly believe, did the Princess realize
that Morton’s book would
explode in the way it did. She had spoken often to me about
her feeling of
absolute isolation. In her own words, she was deeply unhappy
and desperate to escape. I feared the worst. If she tried to
escape, how could she continue to see her children? And if she
were simply to run away, it would, I was sure, destroy her.
All this changed with the publication of Diana: Her True Story.
The royal family and the ‘men in gray suits’ in
the Palace were placed firmly in the gaze of the book’s
millions of readers, most of them sympathetic to the Princess.
In such a glare, to which the media added voluminously,
the Palace’s
ability to control Diana or influence her marriage evaporated.
Her plan had
worked triumphantly.
I was never an avid reader of the News of theWorld,
but on this particular
Sunday - 14 June - I made an exception. Frenzied speculation
about what was in Andrew Morton’s forthcoming book Diana:
Her True Story had reached fever pitch among the newspapers
that had not acquired serialization, of which the second extract
appeared in the Sunday Times that day. In reality only a few
people, including publisher Michael O’Mara, Morton himself
and, as it turned out, Diana knew what was actually in it. Yet
that did not stop some journalists from writing what they thought,
rather than what they actually knew.
’Diana Wept Every Time Charles Was Late
Home’, read the headline.
That did not worry me; apart from typical exaggeration
and spin it was true that there had been occasions when Diana
had cried with pent-up
frustration when her husband failed to appear. Even if he had
a genuine
reason for being late, she always thought that it was because
he had been
with ‘his lady’. No, what concerned me was the sub-heading:
‘She told
bodyguard to tap Camilla phone calls.’
The thrust of the article dealt with speculation
inspired by the Morton
book and in particular its most damning truth - the affair between
the Prince and Camilla. The reporter, Clive Goodman, dubbed
by the paper its ‘royal man in the know’, wrongly
alleged that ‘the book claims Diana turned detective and
asked her trusted body-guard, Ken Wharfe, to check Charles’s
telephone records. He allegedly found that the Prince was ringing
the Parker Bowles’s London home up to four times a week.’
The article also stated that ’she’d get her bodyguard
to take note of the mileage on the car she thought he’d
be using then check it again the next morning.’ The allegations,
which I need hardly say do not appear in Morton’s book,
were completely untrue. But the report alleged that I colluded
in and actually committed a criminal offence (illegal phone
tapping), and otherwise engaged in unauthorized activities that
were wholly unprofessional and a breach of trust. I had no choice
but to sue. The News of the World printed an unreserved apology,
accepting that there had been no truth in the allegations the
paper had made against me.
Everyone in the inner circle knew that divorce
was now inevitable. Yet,
as the world held its breath for one of the most dramatic royal
episodes in
recent times, Diana herself, still in Egypt as speculation about
the Morton
story ran wild before any of the book had appeared in print,
was close to
breaking point. At a press reception just after the Sunday Times
serialization began, she openly lied (as it turned out later)
about her involvement in the book, telling James Whitaker and
photographer Kent Gavin - who, like most of the media, had got
wind of the impending story - that she had had nothing whatsoever
to do with it. I could see the naked disbelief on their faces,
but her lie would be enough to stop them ‘off the record’
across their front pages next day, trumpeting how the Princess
had opened her heart to the Mirror.
In Egypt, to her credit, as she prepared to
face the tornado about to
hit the monarchy, Diana was able to find calm in the eye of
the storm. She
knew that everyone who worked with her was also under strain,
and she did her best to lighten the mood, insisting that we
take time out to ‘de-stress’ ourselves. On the last
night of the trip she invited everyone to join her for a swim
at the British Ambassador’s pool. All of her staff were
there, from baggage master Ron Lewis to her secretary Victoria
‘Ralphie’ Mendham (so nicknamed because she was
always decked out in clothes by the designer Ralph Lauren).
The tour doctor, Surgeon Commander Robin Clark, Royal Navy,
a congenial but rather shy man with a sweep of hair covering
his balding scalp, was rather reluctant to strip off and join
in the fun, preferring instead to loiter rather precariously
at the pool’s edge. For some reason he was wearing a camel
suit which, in the searing heat of Cairo, must have been incredibly
hot. From the pool, Diana eyed him menacingly.
She swam over to me and said, ‘Ken, is
he going to come in for a swim?’
pointing at the unsuspecting Robin.
’No, I don’t think he is, ma’am,’
I replied.
’Well, I think he ought to go in in that
suit.’
’I think that would be better coming
from you, ma’am, not me.’
She was not giving up that easily.
’If he agrees to go in in that ridiculous
suit, will you help me put him in
the water?’ In fact, she had no intention of asking his
agreement. ‘As long
as I don’t get sued by the Royal Navy, ma’am, it
would be a pleasure,’ I said.
With that we attacked Robin with a pincer formation and tossed
him in the
pool head first, his glasses flying off in the process.
What we failed to realize, of course, was that
his suit was heavy wool,
and by the morning it had shrunk by about a foot all round.
Diana, of course,
offered to buy the unfortunate man a replacement - and did so.
The Prince and Princess of Wales returned to
Britain, and to the echoes
of the media-fuelled row over Diana: Her True Story. With the
prospect of
separation looming the Queen summoned them both to a private
meeting.
They discussed a formal separation, but the Queen urged caution
and asked
them to go, with their sons, on holiday together one last time
and to ‘at least
try’. Both agreed, although Diana fully expected a holiday
from Hell. Buoyed
by what, for him, had been the success of the previous year’s
cruise, especially
in giving the pursuing media the slip, Charles accepted an invitation
from
John Latsis to use his yacht again, despite criticism of him
in the press about
accepting free trips. It did not worry the Prince. Since using
the Royal Yacht
Britannia for such frivolity was out of the uetin,itseme prfcty
ccptbl t hm
ha h should make use of a friend’s yacht. Even before
the royal couple and
their sons set off, accurate stories about this second sham
‘love-boat cruise’
appeared in the press, which gleefully reported that the couple
had been
ordered to make a go of their marriage.
The royal ratpack is not for the faint-hearted.
This time, they were
determined that they would track down their prey and win their
stories and
photographs. Kent Gavin was in charge of hiring the boat, which
he somehow
convinced his colleagues from other newspapers was equipped
with the latest
electronic devices for finding and tracking members of the royal
family. As it
turned out, just about the only thing it was equipped with was
enough drink
to have kept the Royal Navy afloat in both world wars. Moreover,
with Mr.
Latsis’s yacht, his money, and his influence in the region,
even the ratpack
were doomed to failure.
In truth, we never even saw them. None the
less, our voyage was far
from uneventful, although it was perhaps a blessing that what
happened on
the cruise did so well away from the intrusive gaze of the press.
Diana was in no mood to put on a show in her
phony marriage, for the
Queen or anyone else. By now the plans she had made for her
escape were
already bearing fruit. The only voyage she wanted to make was
on a straight
course away from the royal family. Her attitude and behavior
made the trip,
in the summer of 1992, almost impossible for those, like myself,
whose job
it was to look after her. A couple of weeks before we were due
to sail she
suddenly refused point blank to go, and told the Prince she
would also stop
her sons from joining him on the trip. This infuriated Charles,
not least
because he was keenly looking forward to a private summer holiday
with the
sons he adored. The Princess had successfully fired the first
salvo. In fact,
she had every intention of going on the cruise, but she took
considerable
pleasure in unsettling her husband.
By this time the Prince and Princess were barely
speaking to each other,
mustering a civil nod in public being about as far as relations
between them
went. So the prospect of a ten-day cruise was a dreadful one
for all concerned,
including the warring couple. The guest list was much the same
as the
previous year: the Romseys again, this time with their children,
ex-King
Constantine and ex-Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, and the Ogilvys
again.
Everyone on board, guests, staff or crew, knew that the Prince
and Princess
were at loggerheads. This was going to be a stormy voyage, even
if the
Aegean remained calm.
Initially, however, the Princess was surprisingly
restrained. She and the
Prince made certain that they saw very little of each other
from the moment
we set sail. If, as the press was reporting, this trip was designed
to rekindle
the embers of a dying marriage, it would need a miracle. Yet
ironically, the
royal party charted a route that they had taken on their honeymoon
aboard
Britannia eleven years earlier, taking in the Greek islands
of the Aegean
and the Ionian Seas on their ten-day cruise. Winds gusting up
to Force 9
prevented them from sailing into the Aegean and instead the
royal party
flew by Queen’s Flight BAe146 to Aktion, opposite Lefkada
in the Ionian
Sea, about two hundred miles from Athens, where they joined
the yacht.
Despite our fears for the cruise, Colin Trimming
and I were consoled
by the seemingly endless supply of caviar and vintage Dom Prignon
champagne.
Although our assignment was fraught with difficulties, especially
as
the Princess’s behavior became increasingly erratic or
irrational, there were
distinct advantages to being on board the Alexander. The royal
couple had
separate cabins, and did not venture into each other’s
territory. Diana suspected
that throughout the cruise her husband spent hours on the satellite
telephone to his mistress.
Her suspicions were well founded. What she
would never know, mercifully,
was that five years later, after her death, Camilla Parker Bowles
would
join the Prince aboard the same yacht. The atmosphere was extremely
tense.
Diana wanted nothing to do with Charles and even her sons became
concerned
about their mother’s strange behavior. On one occasion
there was a
bad scare when Colin raised the alarm after a real fear that
she had jumped
over-board.
He came to my cabin and told me that the Princess
had not been seen
for a couple of hours. She was not in her cabin, and no one
else had the least
idea where she might be. Panic set in. The Prince was informed
that his wife
had apparently disappeared, and I saw genuine concern on his
face. Colin
and I conducted a thorough search, and found nothing. I then
remembered
that Diana had spent some time by the lifeboats, and went to
investigate.
In one of them, crouched beneath the canvas cover in floods
of tears, I found
the Princess. She had been sitting there alone for two hours
sobbing. I was
immensely relieved - at least she was alive. After telling the
others to call off
the search, I spent the next two hours in the lifeboat locked
in conversation
with the Princess under the cover.
’Ken, they don’t understand me. He’s on the
telephone to the Rottweiler,
and everybody knows it. They are all in it with him. They think
I’m mad
and feel sorry for me, but they have no idea what I am going
through,’ she
sobbed.
Quite certainly she had a point. Although Diana
had been unfaithful
too, she at least had the decency not to flaunt her affairs
right under her
husband’s nose. Hurt and embarrassed, she had every right
to feel humiliated
and betrayed. ‘If he wants her here, why doesn’t
he fly her here and leave
me alone? It is a sham, Ken, a total sham. He is only here with
me because
his mummy has ordered him to. He is pathetic. Pathetic,’
she fumed.
She was right in that, too. It was as clear
to her as it was to everyone
else aboard that the Prince had no intention of even trying
to make his wife
feel wanted on this trip. Her reaction may have been childish,
but in this
instance it was entirely justified.
Having worked herself up to a fury, Diana then
demanded that I arrange
for her to be flown home immediately. She said she was not prepared
to stay
on the yacht for one second longer than she had to and, as a
princess, she
insisted that she could do what the bloody hell she liked. This
was not the
first time that I had had to deal with the Princess’s
petulance, nor would
it be the last. I reminded her that I was fully aware of who
she was and
what authority she had. I also reminded her that I was only
alongside her
to protect her, not to be shouted at or ordered about like a
subordinate,
especially as I did not answer to her but to my seniors at Scotland
Yard.
Diana took the point and apologized, but still insisted that
she wanted to
get off what she described as a ‘floating hell’.
She devised a plan whereby the captain of the
Alexander would be instructed
to sail to Cyprus, where she would get a helicopter flight to
the
nearest airport. From there, she said, she would board a cheap
flight home,
just like the thousands of holidaymakers from Britain enjoying
their summer
break on the Greek islands. I explained that getting a flight
home at this
time of year would be nearly impossible - everything would be
pre-booked,
with the result that it would take several days, at least, to
arrange. At this
she became furious again, saying that if she wanted excuses
she would go
to her husband. I tried to reason with her. If she, the most
famous and
photographed woman in the world were to arrive at Cyprus airport
and sit
in the departure lounge with hundreds of tourists, then it would
be headline
news. How on earth would she be able to explain her sudden decision
to quit
her family cruise? Surely, I said, appealing to her sense of
reason, it would
be better to tough it out aboard the Alexander for just a few
more days?
Then, with the final throw of the dice, I asked,
‘And what about your
sons?’ She paid me the compliment of listening to my arguments.
Despite
her occasional descents into immaturity, Diana actually had
a firm grasp of
the real world, even if at times she pretended not to. She knew
that to make
a show of defiance in front of her two beloved sons would be
unforgivable.
She was just deeply frustrated with living a lie and determined
to have her
freedom, but she realized to make a stand at this moment would
send out
the wrong signals. In the eyes of the media and the world she
would be the
quitter, not the wronged wife pushed almost beyond endurance.
At last, to
my relief, she agreed to remain aboard the yacht for the remainder
of the
cruise.
That relief must have been written across my
face. She burst out laughing,
both at my look, and at our situation, a policeman and a princess
crouched in conversation in a covered lifeboat.
’Come on, Ken,’ she said, ‘we’d
better get back to the rest of them.
Otherwise that bloody husband of mine will be cracking open
the champagne,
hoping that I did actually jump overboard and he can make that
hideous
woman his Princess.’ The determined glint was back in
her blue eyes.
I knew, however, that we were not completely
out of the woods yet.
The Princess, although placated, was primed
and ready to attack if her
husband gave her sufficient reason. The Prince, sensibly, since
otherwise he
would have caught the full fury of her anger and frustration,
ignored his
wife’s tantrum; in fact he did not even bother to speak
to her that night.
With several days of the holiday still to go, however, the rest
of the party
were living on their nerves.
It was the young princes who, in the end, provided
the link with reality
that everybody aboard this floating paradise needed. Harry,
ever the daredevil,
started it. With the Alexander at anchor off one of the Greek
islands,
the fearless boy took it into his head to leap more than thirty
feet from the
stern of the yacht into the sea below. Laughing as he trod water,
he then
dared his older brother to join him. William, never one to shirk
a challenge,
especially from Harry, followed. Both of them then tried to
goad Colin into
following them into the sea. It was at times like this that
Colin, with magnificent
timing, always managed to pull rank on me. ‘In you go,
Wharfey,’ he
ordered, absolutely deadpan. ‘We can’t have the
second and third in line to
the throne swimming around down there without protection.’
I looked at him
in disbelief. Then, realizing that he was serious, I stripped
to my shorts, shut
my eyes and took the plunge. It was terrifying, and I had visions
of smashing
against the side of the yacht on the way down. As soon as I
hit the water
with an almighty splash, the two princes pounced. Harry adopted
his usual
fighting tactic, aiming below the belt, and when I managed to
wrestle him
off, his brother was on my shoulders within seconds, trying
to grab me round
the neck and duck me under the water. Everyone watched from
the deck,
laughing and shouting encouragement, and a breath of normality
seemed to
creep back into the atmosphere aboard the Alexander. Even so,
the young
princes’ leap caused a considerable stir. Prince Charles
questioned Colin as
to how they had been allowed to get away with it without being
stopped.
The Princess, however, thought the entire incident was extremely
funny and
praised her sons for their nerve, perhaps another swipe at her
husband. But
there were no reprisals. The Prince told his two sons that they
were never
to do it again and it was soon forgotten. It was a welcome break
from the
gloomy process of keeping the Prince and Princess apart, and
for that most
of us were extremely grateful.
Desperate to think of ways of keeping Diana
occupied, I arranged a tabletennis
competition involving all the party, including the protection
officers.
The Princess, who could be fiercely competitive, took the tournament
extremely
seriously, and with a combination of a naturally good eye for
the
ball and a certain amount of gentle persuasion she reached the
final against
ex-Queen Anne-Marie of Greece. Fortunately, the elegant former
queen had
the good grace (as well as the good sense) to lose the match
to placate her
younger opponent. Everyone, particularly Prince Charles, breathed
a sigh of
relief when Diana emerged victorious. It put her in a good mood
for the rest
of the voyage, and all talk of airlifts to an airport in Cyprus
evaporated.
By the summer of 1992 the royal family seemed
hell-bent on self-destruction.
The Duke and Duchess of York had separated, and the infamous
toe-sucking
incident, in which the Duchess appeared in intimate photographs
with her
Texan ‘financial adviser’, John Bryan, had graced
the front pages of the
British tabloids. The Princess Royal was divorced from Mark
Phillips, and
was enjoying a new love affair with the Queen’s former
equerry, Commander
Tim Laurence, Royal Navy (whom she would later marry) while
Prince
Edward was making headline news by announcing ‘I’m
not gay!’ without, it
seems, having been asked the question. Above all, the marriage
of the Prince
and Princess of Wales had been exposed as a charade, and many
felt that
it was only a matter of time before it was dissolved. By the
time the royal
couple returned to Britain the marriage, far from being revived
by the cruise,
was on the verge of collapse. Now, however, the taped telephone
conversation,
recorded on the last day of 1989 between Diana and James Gilbey
was
at last released. Coming as it did so soon after the row over
Andrew Morton’s
book, it proved to be, for the Princess, one scandal too many.
Ultimately, the
publication of her intimate conversation and deeply unflattering
comments
about the royal family was the catalyst for her exit from the
House of Windsor.
In my opinion, the tapes were more damning in the Palace’s
eyes, than
even her suspected cooperation in the writing of Diana: Her
True Story. I
had heard rumors of the tapes’ existence several weeks
before the transcripts
were published. When I confronted the Princess with this less
than welcome
news she was understandably concerned. She had every reason
to worry, for
she of all people knew the nature of her relationship with James
Gilbey.
What actually happened was this. On 25 August,
not long after the
Prince and Princess returned from the cruise aboard the Alexander,
the editor
of the Sun, Kelvin McKenzie, who always knew the tapes were
a ticking time
bomb in the newspaper’s safe, published transcripts of
the illegally recorded
conversation after the existence of the tapes was mentioned
in America’s
top-selling magazine, the National Enquirer.
’Dianagate’ or ‘Squidgygate’,
as the scandal came to be called, effectively
exploded the myth of Diana the perfect princess. The Sun even
put an extract
from the tapes on a premium telephone number, so that readers
could call
and listen to Diana’s unmistakable voice. Throughout the
conversation the
Princess, who was alone in her bedroom at Sandringham, desperate
to escape
the tension and hostility emanating from her husband’s
family, simpers as
her admirer begs her to blow him a kiss over the phone. She
describes life
with her husband as ‘real, real torture’, and speaks
of her frustration and
resentment towards the royal family. Significantly, she also
expresses fears
about becoming pregnant with his child, a clear indication of
the intensity
of their relationship.
In turn, Gilbey calls her ‘darling’
fifty-three times, and ‘Squidgy’ or
’Squidge’ fourteen times. In one exchange he says,
‘Oh Squidgy, I love you.
Love you. Love you.’ Here was a typically foolish, if
affectionate, conversation
between two people involved in an intimate relationship. Adolescent
sexual innuendo aside, the illegally taped conversation was
significant because
it confirmed to the public that the claims made in Andrew Morton’s
book that the Princess could no longer cope with her life as
a member of the
royal family, claims dismissed by the Palace as mere speculation,
were true.
At one point during her conversation with Gilbey, Diana says,
‘I was very
bad at lunch and I nearly started blubbing.
I just felt really sad and empty and thought
“Bloody hell after all I’ve
done for that fucking family,” it is so desperate.’
Nobody, not even a Palace
skilled at evasion and stonewalling, could call such a remark
‘speculation’.
Diana also told Gilbey how, at lunch, the Queen Mother had given
her a
strange look. ‘It’s not hatred, it’s a sort
of interest and pity,’ Diana said.
Until that moment no one inside the royal family
and its circle had ever
publicly criticized the Queen Mother (although, to be fair,
it was not Diana’s
fault that her private conversation was made public).
Privately, however, being disrespectful about
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was a favorite
pastime of the Princess’s.
Ironically, she would often speak with satisfaction
of the disruption the
death of ‘the nation’s favorite granny’ would
cause the officials at Buckingham
Palace, and speculate irreverently on the choice of black clothes
available
to her to wear at the Queen Mother’s funeral.
Perhaps Fate, like God, is not mocked. The
grand old lady would outlive
Diana by five years, and was there to pay her respects at the
younger woman’s
funeral. Yet the extraordinary public reaction to Diana’s
death meant that
she had the last word. No royal funeral, not even that of the
Queen Mother
in 2002, matched the public outpouring of grief for the Princess.
From the
transcripts of what was said, Diana’s words gave me all
the confirmation I
needed that the taped conversation was genuine.
Although some commentators questioned whether
the Princess would actually
use expletives to esrie erinlas,I ne byod out ha te oneratonwa
nt hax
Iha, ftr al,herdhe ue hat same expression in the same context
a hundred
times and more. I now know by whom the original recordings of
the intimate
conversations were made and why. True, they were picked up by
amateur radio
hams using basic scanners, but they were being transmitted regularly
at
different times to ensure the conversation was heard, knowing
that it would
eventually end up in the hands of the media. There are at least
two sets of
Diana tapes in existence; recordings of the same conversation
made on different
days by different radio buffs. A full investigation was carried
out by the
internal security services which identified all those involved,
but for legal reasons
I cannot expand further, nor is it necessary to do so. It does,
however,
lend credence to the Princess’s belief, so often dismissed
by her detractors
as an example of her paranoia, that the Establishment was out
to destroy
her. She was aware that the intelligence agencies routinely
monitored the
daily lives of the royal family. Royalty Protection Department
officers were
categorically not involved in this surveillance. For my part,
I simply accepted
that any such steps would be a necessary part of her security,
and warned
the Princess to be aware, and went about my business. I did
not know until
much later that they routinely taped the Princess’s telephone
conversations.
We, her protection officers, were trained to be always careful,
in case a terrorist
organization was bugging her phones, to keep our conversations
on the
telephone short, and to speak, if necessary, in coded language.
Not Diana,
however, who used the telephone incessantly, and often spoke
on it, literally,
for hours. Nevertheless I was as shocked as she was when the
tapes were
made public.
In the end, the ‘Dianagate’ scandal
was a pretty tawdry, if not squalid,
affair that reflected little credit on most of those concerned:
the Princess
and Gilbey, Prince Charles and the senior members of the royal
family, the
media, and the eavesdroppers.
