Ex bodyguard: Diana would have ‘loved’ candid documentary

Producers of a new documentary about Princess Diana say it offers insight. Critics say it’s nothing but exploitation. But a former bodyguard says Diana would have been pleased that candid recordings of her are being broadcast in Britain for the first time.

Friends of the late princess have slammed a British broadcaster’s decision to air private recordings in which she speaks frankly about her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles, commenting on their sex life, her fury at her husband’s mistress and her love for another man.

Yet Ken Wharfe, Diana’s protection officer between 1986 and 1993, says the princess who died in 1997 would appreciate the chance to be heard.

“She would love it,” Wharfe told the Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. “‘For the first time’, she would say, ‘people are actually listening to and hearing what I am saying.”’

Wharfe also serves as a commentator in the documentary.

Diana was a huge star in her lifetime — at once princess, style icon, charity worker and tabloid celebrity — and has rarely been out of the news since her shocking death in a Paris car crash 20 years ago this month. But she has usually been seen through the eyes and words of others.

“Diana: In Her Own Words,” which airs Sunday on Channel 4, includes portions of recordings made by Diana’s voice coach Peter Settelen in 1992 and 1993, just after Diana and Charles separated.

They divorced in 1996, and Charles married his longtime paramour Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.

Portions of the tapes were broadcast by U.S. network NBC in 2004 but they have never been shown in Britain.

The tapes were made to help Diana practice public speaking as she struck

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