Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CLOSE CIRCLES
And the millionaire Old Etonian, whose death was announced yesterday, always knew exactly who made them.
But he tried to protect his family from learning of his affair with Diana, who made the calls after he dumped her.
With his death from cancer at 73, discreet Oliver has taken the full story of their tempestuous relationship to his grave.
But he never knew Diana was sitting outside his house making the calls on her mobile.
Last night one of her closest friends revealed the extraordinary truth behind the calls, which were investigated by the Metropolitan Police in 1995.
Her confidante said: “Diana was very naughty. She would drive to his house and park up outside and then call his house phone from her mobile.
“She’d do it in the middle of the night, so she could watch the lights in the house go on as he scrambled to the phone. She would be there for hours, watching and calling.
“She knew she couldn’t be with Hoare, because he was married. And while he might have been a gentleman, and a very entertaining one at that, it was his wife who actually had the money.
GAMES
“Diana would always say, ‘I know he will never leave his wife’. But she wasn’t used to not getting her way. So she would enjoy taunting him and reminding him she was there.
“She even asked her staff to ring his house number for her. She’d say, “Ring that number and then hang up’. Of course, no one knew then what they were doing then.
“Diana was playing games in the relationship, but she enjoyed it. He was playing with fire when he started dating a princess, and he should have known he could get burnt.”
Now, with Oliver’s death at his home in France, other friends have recalled their tempestuous relationship.
Their affair was so passionate that Diana used to dream of running away with him.
And Oliver used to hide in a pal’s car boot to get smuggled into Kensington Palace for secret trysts. On one infamous occasion Oliver, enjoying a cigar after a night of passion, triggered the fire alarm at the palace.
It set off the sprinklers and staff found him naked and sheepishly hiding behind a bay tree in the garden.
He was told: “Mr Hoare, I think it’s time you went home, don’t you?” But once Oliver, a wealthy art expert, had decided to dump her, Diana became the ultimate woman scorned.
Fuelled by jealousy and Oliver’s decision to stay with his wife, she launched a vitriolic series of more than 300 nuisance calls to his family home.
A friend said: “These calls showed the sheer depth and intensity of their rela-