Harry’s pal: The night I exposed him as a bit of a wine duff
PRINCE Harry’s explosive autobiography may be full of ‘truths’ and ‘revelations’. But missing from Spare is one story from his single days which doesn’t exactly cast him in the best light. His old friend Howard Spooner, a nightclub boss, tells of a trip to the upmarket Alpine ski resort of Verbier in 2011. ‘We were in this restaurant,’ he recalls. ‘Straight away Harry said he was a wine expert and ordered a £600 Pomerol instead of letting me, who was paying for the meal, choose the wine.
‘I said, “Well if you are such a wine expert, let me do a test with you.” So, I ordered a £30 bottle of local wine, asked the waiter to wrap napkins around the bottles and, of course, he failed the test.
‘He chose the local wine as the superior wine. He laughed it off but despite being embarrassed, he continued to order the expensive wine.’
Spooner, whose London nightclub empire included Harry’s old Chelsea haunt Public, also notes that the Harry of those days was far from how he portrays himself now.
‘The person who campaigns for women’s rights and calls people out as misogynist is not the person I spent time with,’ he says. ‘That person was more aligned to Jeremy Clarkson than Meghan Markle.’
At Public, which Spooner co-owned with Harry and William’s pal Guy Pelly, he recalls a ‘line of girls walking past Harry’s table and he would just point, and they would sit down’. He adds: ‘My wife bought Spare and I told her off because it is like funding an addict. Harry loves his “truth bombs”. But who would have thought that his story would turn into a sob story?’
Spooner is an arch-royalist who says he bought The George Hotel in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight because Charles II used to stay there. He is about to relaunch the venue. ‘I think we’re very fortunate to have a royal family and I can’t see why Harry has turned on them,’ he said.