Harry takes Meghan to meet Tiggy
PRINCE Harry has taken his fiancee Meghan Markle to meet the other significant woman in his life, former nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.
After a day of engagements in Cardiff last week, they reportedly visited Tiggy – now Mrs Pettifer – on her family’s sprawling Glanusk Estate, near Crickhowell, South Wales.
Employed by Prince Charles in 1993 to look after his two young sons after he separated from Princess Diana, former nursery school teacher Tiggy formed a close bond with Harry and William, even calling them ‘my babies’.
But her familiarity prompted a jealous reaction from Diana, who was said to have been obsessed with the bizarre idea that Charles wanted her murdered in order to marry the nanny. The princess was also said to have spread false allegations that Tiggy had become pregnant and been forced to have an abortion.
An investigation was launched by Sir Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary and Diana’s brother- in- law, after the princess allegedly approached Tiggy at a party and hissed: ‘So sorry to hear about the baby.’
Tiggy instructed lawyers to deny the claim, resulting in a letter to Diana demanding she withdraw the ‘ completely unfounded allegations’ and telling her: ‘You have got this whole thing dreadfully wrong.’
In 1996, William asked his warring parents not to attend a school celebration and invited Tiggy. After Diana died in 1997, Harry, then 12, turned to Tiggy as a source of comfort, leading to descriptions of her as a sort of ‘surrogate mother’.
In 1998 she was accused of letting the princes abseil down a 130ft dam without proper safety equipment, forcing a palace investigation.
She retired from Charles’s household after she married former Coldstream Guards officer Charles Pettifer in 1999, with whom she has two sons, Fred and Tom.
But she has kept in close contact with both young princes and Harry is Fred’s godfather.
Tiggy and her family are certain to be guests at Harry’s wedding on May 19. Kensington Palace declined to comment.