REAL story behind Diana’s ‘rock’ and his marriage to a man
As Diana’s ‘rock’ says he’s marrying his boyfriend just months after divorcing his wife of 32 years ...
PAUL Burrell has dined out on his relationship with Princess Diana for nearly 20 years. So it was perhaps inevitable that, when making the announcement he is to marry another man, she would somehow be part of the story.
A spokesman for Burrell confirmed reluctantly to a red-top newspaper on Monday that he is engaged to Graham Cooper, a 58-year-old lawyer, following his divorce from Maria, his wife of 32 years, last September.
The newspaper reported, quoting a source, that the late Princess was the only person to whom he’d confided the secret he was gay.
To which the response from anyone who knows Diana’s former butler — and those who don’t, for that matter — was an archly raised eyebrow. As a tweet read yesterday: ‘In other news, the Pope announces he’s a Catholic.’
But according to the source, 58-year- old Burrell believed nobody had an inkling — apart from the Princess. ‘He did share it with Diana while he worked with her because they were so close. But at the time she was the only woman he felt he could tell.
‘He’s so much happier now that he can tell the world and be comfortable with himself and his relationship.’
It’s not clear how long he and Mr Cooper have been together. The pair were listed as directors of a company in 2011 and were pictured at a B&B together in 2014. Burrell has been uncharacteristically low-key — but then he had a wife and children to consider.
Burrell has released ‘limited’ details of next month’s wedding. Reports claimed the couple are to tie the knot in a circus-themed ceremony in a five-star hotel in the Lake District.
But a friend said reports that waiters will be dressed as clowns and ringmasters are wide of the mark. It is, says the friend, to be a quieter affair. ‘They don’t want too many people there and have limited the guestlist to close family and friends. But it’s going to be suitably lavish. Paul sees this as a new chapter.
‘Guests have a rough idea of where it will take place. But to increase the suspense, Paul and Graham have kept the exact details of the venue quiet.’
It would seem Burrell, who could not be found at the florist he runs in Chester yesterday, has not just kept the venue quiet from his family, but the wedding itself.
Speaking at a semi- detached house in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, yesterday of his son’s decision to ‘come out’ and announce his marriage, Burrell’s father, Graham, 81, said: ‘We only know what’s in the paper. We’re none the wiser.’
Paul himself is said to be aggrieved at the way the news has come out. With hindsight, perhaps the raucous stag party he and Mr Cooper held last month at Funny Girls drag club in Blackpool was a mistake.
While it seems inconceivable that his 63-year- old former wife, Maria, is the only person on earth who had no idea that Burrell is gay — the first of several newspaper reports containing claims of affairs with other men was published back in 2002 — the divorce and subsequent engagement to Mr Cooper may be unwelcome.
Who knows what the couple’s sons, Alex, 27, and Nick, 24, make of it; Maria herself may have been happy with the status quo?
In Florida, where she and Burrell moved in 2004 after he was acquitted of stealing items belonging to Diana, Maria has a celebrity status of sorts, as the wife of the former butler to the Princess of Wales. Now that that marriage is over, some of that prestige is inevi- tably lost. And what of Burrell’s new love? Mr Cooper, the Mail has learned, was in a relationship with a man called John Beddard for almost 20 years before he took up with Burrell. YESTERDAY, Mr Beddard’s mother said: ‘We were very fond of Graham, he was a lovely chap,’ and added that she had had no contact with her son since 2008. ‘He decided he didn’t want to speak to us any more and we don’t even know where he is.’
But Burrell and Mr Cooper are said to be blissfully happy. Appropriately enough, given Burrell’s former royal role, they live together in a mock-Tudor house near the grand Peckforton Castle in Chesh- ire, which was built in the 19th century for John Tollemache, 1st Baron Tollemache.
Burrell, used to living at Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace, albeit ‘below stairs’, feels at home in these surroundings.
Within the grounds of Burrell’s detached home is a large pond, with grounds overlooking a stone circle believed to date back to the Bronze Age.
The circle featured in a recent episode of ITV’s Through The Keyhole, in which viewers are asked to deduce the identity of the homeowner.
The stone circles were a key clue — as Diana is said to have referred to Burrell as ‘her rock’.
True, the property is only mockTudor, but Burrell has added his own little touches to make it suitably regal — such as the commem- orative royal mugs scattered about the place.
There are antiques, art and crystal glasses, and a country kitchen with the slogan ‘It’s all about me’ on the wall above the Aga.
No prizes for guessing who that might be referring to.
In the episode, Burrell is referred to as ‘the homeowner’. Photographs which may show Burrell and Mr Cooper together are blurred in the film — presumably at Burrell’s request.
It’s all a long way from Burrell’s childhood as the eldest of three sons of a Coal Board lorry driver from Derbyshire.
Burrell left his secondary school, William Rhodes, in Chesterfield, in 1973 with six O-levels and took a course in hotel management and catering at High Peak College in Buxton where his former tutor,
Ken Weir, later recalled: ‘Paul always knew exactly where he was going — Buckingham Palace.’
Armed with a diploma in food preparation and service, he worked at a hotel in Bournemouth before writing to the Palace. Nine months later, he was accepted.
Burrell began working at Buckingham Palace on December 10, 1976. After a year, he became the Queen’s footman. Romance blossomed between him and Maria ‘below stairs’ — she was the Duke of Edinburgh’s maid.
Upon their marriage in July 1984, the couple received a telegram from the Queen and Prince Philip reading: ‘Wishing you every possible happiness for the future, Eliza- beth and Philip,’ along with a set of Coalport candlesticks with the Queen and Duke’s monograms.
The service was assisted by the Queen’s chaplain, Canon Anthony Caesar. But even then there were rumours that Burrell was gay.
In 1988, the Burrells began working for Diana and Prince Charles, who were still together, but unhappily so. In 1992, following the royal couple’s separation, the Burrells transferred to Kensington Palace.
Maria was housekeeper/dresser at KP, as it is known, until 1994. Interestingly, while Burrell ingratiated himself with the Princess and became her confidant, Maria felt marginalised. She left in 1994 because of unhappiness about the nature of her duties. ‘Am I really expected to go round this place with a vacuum cleaner?’ she is said to have once asked.
You could say that — echoing Diana’s explosive Panorama interview in which she discussed Charles’s affair with Camilla for the first time — that there were three of them in the marriage: Burrell, Maria and Diana.
Today on his website, a quote attributed to Diana is proudly displayed: ‘You [Burrell] are the captain of my ship. I am safe with you at the helm.’
Burrell would bow to his mistress every morning and say: ‘Good morning, Your Royal Highness.’ He said in an interview in 1999: ‘ Every single morning, the minute she rose I’d bow.
‘It was my way of showing my respect, saying: “This is where I belong. This is my world.” ’
He was distraught after she died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997. The night before her funeral, he kept vigil beside the coffin and read to his mistress.
But the image of the devoted butler came into question four years later, in 2001, when Burrell was arrested over the alleged theft of a £ 500,000 jewel- encrusted model boat and other items belonging to the late Princess.
At his trial at the Old Bailey the following year, the court heard that the police had seized 310 items belonging to Diana when they raided his home in Farndon, Cheshire.
The items included dresses, shoes and hats, a pair of her pyjamas as well as personal letters to her son, William. The items were found all over the house — in the loft, study, living room and hall of Burrell’s home.
He was sensationally cleared, however, after the Queen herself came forward with crucial information.
She first told Prince Charles of a conversation she had with Burrell in the weeks after Diana’s death when the butler said he’d taken some of her papers for safe keeping. Charles told his private secretary and the police were informed.
The revelation fatally undermined the prosecution’s case, which was based on the claim Burrell had removed Diana’s belongings without telling anyone.
Just as Burrell was due to give evidence, the 12- day trial collapsed. He was found not guilty on all three counts of theft — against Diana, the Prince of Wales and Prince William — and told he was free to leave the court.
But this was by no means the last the world was to hear of Burrell and his relationship with Princess Diana.
There were sordid revelations in a Sunday newspaper that Burrell had had a two-year gay affair with an Australian man, Greg Pead, while working as a young footman at Buckingham Palace.
He claimed Burrell sneaked him into Buckingham Palace, where they had sex in his quarters. On another occasion, Pead claimed, Burrell took him into the Queen’s private apartments while she was away and introduced him to her corgis.
Burrell denied the allegations; yesterday, Mr Pead, now 63, came forward to say the news that Burrell was marrying another man had ‘vindicated’ him.
‘He has always denied being gay but now he is getting married I have been vindicated,’ said Pead from his home in Australia. HIS wife said at the time: ‘There are no secrets between Paul and me. What’s in the past is in the past. I went into this marriage with my eyes wide open. We have already confronted these issues.’ But there was yet more. After saying time and time again he would not write a book about the Princess, he went and did it.
The allegations in A Royal Duty, published in 2003, were explosive. One of the claims he made was that Diana believed her life was under threat and feared a car ‘accident’ would be arranged — ten months before her actual death in Paris.
She entrusted the butler with a letter, he claimed, setting out her belief that her car brakes would be tampered with to cause her serious injury and so clear the way for the Prince of Wales to remarry.
As proof, he published extracts from the alleged letter, handwritten, in a style similar to the Princess’s handwriting.
But the letter appeared not to be dated, with the only reference to time being its first sentence: ‘I am sitting here at my desk today in October...’
Burrell made millions from the book. A sequel, The Way We Were: Remembering Diana, did not fare quite so well.
A few years ago, with he and Maria leading increasingly separate lives, Burrell returned to Britain to concentrate on his florist shop, which was set up in 2001.
At some point his relationship with Mr Cooper began. They will make it official next month.
Whether the Queen will send a telegram this time round is open to question.