‘Diana visits me at night & talks to me
BY PAUL BURRELL The Princess’s former butler and confidant
DIANA’S butler Paul Burrell has revealed that the dead Princess talks to him in his dreams.
“She tells me things,” he said. “It’s not scary or flaky, it just happens.” The father-of-two, who earlier this week
DIANA’S rock Paul Burrell has revealed for the first time that she always suspected he was gay.
And they were so close, the Princess even tried to get him to move in with her at Kensington Palace.
This week it was revealed former butler Paul, 58, will marry his lawyer partner Graham Cooper in April after divorcing his wife of 32 years, Maria.
He says: “Diana knew I was gay. She was a good judge of character.
“We were best friends, like brother and sister, and shared lots of secrets.
“Her reliance on me was so great she even asked me to move into Kensington Palace.
“I told her, ‘Yes, but the problem is Maria and the boys. They need me and I need to be with them, and my family is very, very important to me.’
“‘I understand that,’ she said, ‘But wouldn’t it just be fun if you lived here with me.’ She often joked about that.
“Diana just thought I could simply walk out and get on with another life. But how could I do that to my family?”
In a candid interview, the dad-oftwo talks of the secret torment he is escaping from – and why Diana’s death gave him his push to freedom.
CONFIDANT
“My sexuality was never of any question to her,” said Paul. “Diana knew I was not a conventional male.
“She wanted the ultimate confidant – and that is what she got in me.
“I think sexuality is like a sliding scale from white to black and we’re all a little shade of grey.
“I think Diana realised I was halfway along the scale. I was able to step into different territories and that was the man she was looking for.”
Paul admits this week has been difficult. He had hoped to reveal he was gay on his own terms.
And he wishes Diana was here to support him. “She was always there for me,” he says softly. “And today, I need her more than ever.
“I was Diana’s rock, she said that, I wish she was here to be mine.” He adds: “I never thought coming out would be so difficult. I thought I would be free in a new life.
“Sadly, it’s not like that and I find myself, once again, in the middle of a storm. I expected a lightbulb moment and that hasn’t happened.
“I’m hoping it will in April when I’m standing beside my boys and my partner, vowing to spend the rest of our lives together. But for now, I’m digging deep to find Diana’s strength to pull me through. What would she say to me? She’d say, ‘Be true to yourself.’ She would embrace me, smile and say, ‘It’s okay Paul. Tell me all about it. Come on, sit down, we’ll get a box of Kleenex, and we’ll talk through it.’ “I saw her counsel so many people in my life – she was good at that. She counselled me when my mother died.
“Now I have to draw from my knowledge of her. She coped with so much in her short life and came through it because she dug deep – deep inside to that spirituality of hers and that’s where I need to go to today.”
Paul says he always knew he was gay but buried his desires. He had married Maria in 1983 and they had two sons, Alexander and Nicholas.
But when Diana died in August 1997, Paul felt it was time to face up to the truth. His marriage started to collapse and the couple split in secret.
He has shared his life with Graham, 58, for more than 10 years.
Paul admits: “My sexuality was always at the back of my head. But I saw it as selfish, a desire I should suppress. I had a duty to my family. My duty was to take care of them. I could not abandon that responsibility.
“Then when Diana died I realised I had to be true to myself. I struggled with it for a long time – I’m probably still struggling today.”
He continues: “My personal life started to change with the tremendous shock of Diana’s death.
“I realised life is too short. I thought, ‘How can I go forward? What would Diana have wanted me to do?’
“And in the strangest way, her death pushed me to do what was right with my life and to become who I am.”
Paul reveals Diana left him money in her will, enabling him to make a fresh start. He will always be grateful.
“I was able to move to the north of England and buy my little flower shop. It was what I needed,” he says. Paul, who lives with Graham in a mock Tudor cottage in Cheshire, sobs at points during the interview. He is mentally wrestling with the impact his marriage in a luxury Lake District hotel is having on Maria and the boys.
INSPIRATIONAL
But he says: “I rely on the past – the fact I’ve lived through an extraordinary time and stood beside two unique and inspirational women of our century who have taught me much about life.
“I don’t think you can spend 21 years with the Queen and Princess Diana and not learn something.
“I’m not an intelligent man, I don’t have any qualifications, but I think I’ve been to a great university of life and my principals were those two women
would dress and undress in front of him and model the designer fashions placed before her.
Paul recalls: “I chose her dresses, I chose her jewellery, I arranged magnificent flower displays. She’d ask me what I thought of her clothes.
“One day Jacques Azagury, her dressmaker towards the end of her life, was creating her final look. He was pinning some beautiful fabrics to her and she turned to me and said, ‘What do you think?’ I asked her if she wanted my honest opinion and she nodded. ‘Well,’ I replied. ‘You can’t go out wearing that, it’s far too short.’
“It was way, way above the knee. She then said ‘What about here?’ and pointed to her chest. ‘Absolutely not,” I replied. ‘Far too much cleavage’.
“I have many memories like that. I loved to dress her, I loved to please her, I loved to give her what she needed.”
But Diana didn’t feel threatened by Paul and knew she could open up completely with him.
“Our relationship was a unique one,” he reveals. “She invited me into her world. I know a great deal about the men Diana courted. I know the truth – whether it is Will Carling, James Hewitt … all of them.
“There was nothing she would keep from me – apart from the Panorama interview with Martin Bashir. She knew I wouldn’t approve.”
Still today, nearly 20 years after her death, Paul’s adoration of Diana touches every aspect of his new life and perhaps even prepared him for it.
Born in a mining community in Grassmoor, Derbyshire, Paul accepts his “sensitivities and interests” were a major part of his sexuality. But he couldn’t admit the truth.
“I was born in 1958 before it was decriminalised,” he says. “I’m from a generation of people who were never allowed self expression of their sexuality. And coal mining doesn’t breed flower arranging.
FREEDOM
“Two hundred men getting their backs scrubbed in a communal shower doesn’t allow anyone to have sexual freedom.” But Paul’s freedom finally came thanks to Diana.
She would leave him notes, to remind him how special he was to her. One is particularly poignant today.
It told of how she was looking forward to a dramatic change in her life – and suggests Paul’s life would also experience a seismic shift.
She describes him as her “third eye” and “tower of strength” before adding: “The tide is changing and we can all have peace of mind and look forward to happier times in different homes.”
Paul says: “How apt are those words at this particular time in my life? She’s suggesting I was on a journey too.”
He reveals the “third eye” is a jokey reference to how he protected her from unwanted attention and instinctively knew what she wanted.
“Diana knew I would do anything for her,” says Paul. “The truth is, I did love her. I loved everything about her.
“But I was not her lover. See, I always knew she would come home. She would come home to me – how she called me her ‘perky Paul’. She’d come home to her ‘little Merlin’.
“I’ve never told anyone about that nickname before. She always said to me, ‘You know what my next move will be. You read me like a book.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, because I have lived with you for so long I know exactly what you are going to say. I know what you want and when you want it.’
“The telephone would ring and I would say, ‘That’s your mother.’ She’d pick up the phone and look at me and her mouth would fall open and she said, ‘How did you know that?’
“’Oh, it’s just guessing,’ I’d reply, and she said … ‘no, it’s not, it’s something more than that.’ That’s why I got the title Merlin. Merlin knew everything.
“I had a sixth sense around Diana. That’s why I did my job so well.
“That’s why she wanted me there because she could trust me.”