‘They spat at her... to make her cry’
PRINCE WILLIAM reveals the depth of his antipathy towards the paparazzi in the programme, recalling that photographers once spat at his mother to try to elicit a reaction.
He said people would be ‘utterly appalled’ if they knew ‘exactly what went on’ 20 years ago.
Described by her brother Earl Spencer as the ‘most hunted person of the modern age’, Diana was killed in a car crash, along with her friend Dodi Al Fayed and their driver Henri Paul, after being pursued through Paris by a pack of paparazzi in 1997.
William says: ‘If you are the Princess of Wales and you’re a mother, I don’t believe being chased by 30 guys on motorbikes who block your path, who spit at you to get a reaction from you… and make a woman cry in public to get a photograph, I don’t believe that is appropriate.
‘I sadly remember that most of the time she ever cried about anything was to do with press intrusion. Harry and I, we had to live through that.’
William’s hostility towards the media was apparent from an early age. During a skiing holiday in Austria when he was 11, he turned on a group of photographers and had to be restrained by detectives.
In recent years, particularly since marrying and having children, he has been keen to shield his family from media exposure.
In September 2012, William and his wife said they were ‘hugely saddened’ by a ‘grotesque’ invasion of their privacy, after topless photographs of the Duchess were published by a French celebrity magazine. The couple are still seeking damages.
Royal aides called the photographs ‘reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press during the life of Diana’.
William has called the photographs ‘particularly shocking’ and said that they caused him particular distress because of the way his mother died.
Two years ago Kensington Palace issued an unprecedented warning to paparazzi, accusing photographers of harassing Prince George, and using ‘increasingly dangerous tactics’ to obtain covert images of the third-in-line to the throne.
Paparazzi intent on selling expensive images to foreign publications have hidden in car boots and among sand dunes, and have used other young children as bait to draw their ‘No.1 target’ into view, the palace said in an unusually strongly worded open letter. But William and Kate praised the British press for refusing to publish pictures they had taken.
Earlier this year, William said: ‘I want George to grow up in a real, living environment. I don’t want him growing up behind palace walls – he has to be out there.
‘The media make it harder but I will fight for them to have a normal life.
‘One lesson I’ve learned is you never let them [the press] in too far because it’s very difficult to get them back out again.
‘You’ve got to maintain a barrier and a boundary because if you cross it, if both sides cross it, a lot of pain and problems can come from it.’
Recalling the infamous skiing trip to Lech in Austria, photographer Jayne Fincher tells the programme that some paparazzi reneged on a deal to simply picture the princes and their mother at a photocall on the first day of their holiday.
Instead, she says, the pack pursued them ‘through the town to a sweetshop’. Fincher adds: ‘The photographers were running everywhere. It was like rats running everywhere.
‘They all wanted to be in their face, right up to them, pushing and shoving, they were fighting with each other. Photographers were falling over. And the boys were very frightened. I was in the shop when she [Diana] came in… and she was sort of exasperated by it [as if she was thinking] what, what are they doing? I’ve kept my part of the deal, we did our photocall, why are they all doing this?’
WILLIAM ON PAPARAZZI People would be utterly appalled if they knew exactly what went on