Michael Colborne
Close aide to the Prince of Wales who advised Lady Diana Spencer on how to adapt to her new role
MICHAEL COLBORNE, who has died aged 83, was the indispensable major-domo of the Prince of Wales’s office for 10 years between 1975 and 1984.
Working under Squadron Leader David Checketts, Private Secretary until 1978, he set up the Prince’s office at Buckingham Palace, appointed many staff members and undertook the day-to-day administration, including attending to Prince Charles’s personal affairs. He took it upon himself to be a vital link between the young Prince and the outside world, offering him straightforward advice and plain speaking, and when Lady Diana Spencer came on the scene, he spent time with her, advising and helping her to adapt to her new role.
One colleague commended his attention to detail and likened him to Milo Minderbinder in the novel Catch-22, since he often mentioned “the importance of middle management”.
Michael Melville Colborne was born in Dorking on January 20 1934, the son of Leslie Colborne, a bank clerk with naval connections. Michael’s grandfather was Surgeon-rearadmiral William Colborne, MRCS, Deputy Surgeon-general to the Royal Navy, and his uncle, John Colborne, CB, was also a Surgeon Rear-admiral. Michael was educated at a grammar school and began his working life as a trainee bank clerk, aged 16. But banking was not for him and without telling his parents he joined the Royal Navy, serving for 23 years.
As a chief petty officer he earned a long service medal in 1967, and met Prince Charles when both were serving in the destroyer Norfolk. Colborne tutored the Prince in naval law, administration and payrolls, and, as president of the senior rates’ mess, he sometimes invited the Prince for a drink. They met again when both were serving at HMS Heron, the Royal Navy Air Station in Somerset, the Prince undertaking helicopter flying instruction.
Colborne was 14 years older than Prince Charles. He was soon spotted by Lord Mountbatten, who saw him as the ideal man to serve and bolster the Prince. There were times when Mountbatten had to explain to him that if Prince Charles shouted at him, as he was inclined to do, this must be reckoned a compliment.
Before starting he told the Prince: “I will always be Michael Colborne. Don’t expect me to change.” Charles responded: “That’s exactly why I want you to join me. I don’t want you to change. Too many others do that.” Colborne would sit in the office and speak common sense to the young Prince as he found his way in life. He encouraged him to follow his instincts, which sometimes put him at odds with the next Private Secretary, Edward Adeane. If a royal speech went well, he commended it, if not he had no hesitation in telling him: “It was a bloody disaster, Sir.”
Once Charles made some barbed remarks at a dinner about two people dragging their feet over some of his ideas. Colborne wrote him a letter saying he had been unnecessarily harsh. The Prince called him in and told him: “I read it and screwed it up into a ball and I kicked it round the bedroom.” When asked why, the Prince replied: “Because unfortunately you were right. I wasn’t very nice to those two men that night.”
Colborne first met Lady Diana Spencer on the day the Prince’s steeplechaser, Alibar, died. Soon afterwards he arranged a chair for her in his office so that she could chat to him. It fell to him to send her flowers on behalf of her fiancé and he was one of those to whom she turned for advice as to the hold that Camilla Parker Bowles had over the Prince, on which matter he was diplomatically evasive.
She confided her unhappiness to Colborne, and he endeavoured to speak to her as plainly as he had to Prince Charles: “You’re never going to be on your own again. And you’re going to change. In four or five years time you’re going to be an absolute bitch, not through any fault of your own, but because of the circumstances in which you live.”
Diana asked him to continue to call her by her Christian name after her marriage, but Colborne assured her: “I will call you Ma’am – no ifs or buts.” This did not prevent him from taking her aside after a reception at Kensington Palace for the English National Ballet, and ticking her off: “You may be heading straight out after this event, Ma’am, but you must never come down to a party without wearing your tights.” It was in Colborne’s office that a parcel arrived shortly before the wedding in 1981. Colborne was called away and Diana opened it. Inside was a gold chain bracelet with the initials G& F entwined, a gift from the groom to his mistress.
When there were tensions at Balmoral during the honeymoon, Prince Charles asked Colborne to come up to talk to Diana as she was clearly unhappy. After one row, the Prince threw Diana’s wedding ring at him, and later insulted him about a new Range Rover, “calling him all the names under the sun”.
All this and more Colborne put up with until a row in Canada in 1983 when the Prince ranted at him for 15 minutes, accusing him of devoting more time to the Princess than to him. Colborne wrote another letter saying he had thought he was being helpful. But it was “one earful too many”, and though he would have walked through fire for his royal master, he felt the man had changed and that the situation was unlikely to improve. He resigned. The Prince tried to persuade him to stay on, even telephoning his wife, while senior courtiers also tried to persuade him to stay. Colborne stayed until the end of 1984.
A contributory factor was the reluctance of the office to give him the title of Comptroller and a reasonable salary. His official title was Secretary, the Prince and Princess of Wales’s Office and as such he was staff not Household, despite being a close aide to the Prince of Wales. He also felt that the more traditional courtiers were scheming to torpedo his efforts to mould the Prince as a modern royal with concerns such as youth unemployment and homelessness.
The view of informed outsiders was that Colborne was a “grievous and unnecessary loss”, and though he was glad to be spared the rows and tensions, he said that he had had 10 wonderful years. The same outsiders found him a consistently more reliable witness to those difficult years than the Princess of Wales with her ever-changing version of events.
Colborne was appointed a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian (LVO) in the New Year Honours List of 1985. He then spent six years as personal assistant to the late Ronnie Driver (father of the actress, Minnie Driver), Chairman of the London United Investments Insurance Group. A similar role followed with the Duke of Westminster, before part-time work with consultants such as Gemini and Proudfoot.
Throughout this time Colborne participated in sporting and charity work, recalling with muted pride that he and Sir David Checketts had helped Prince Charles to conceive the Prince’s Trust. He also collaborated with the explorer, Colonel John Blashfordsnell, and engineered the Prince’s support for the Operation Drake and Raleigh explorations.
Not long before his death he received an evening visit from Prince Charles, who brought chocolates and gave his wife some freshly cut dahlias.
In 1958 Colborne married Shirley Brooks, who survives him, with one son, Stewart.