DON’T MENTION DIANA!
BEHIND PALACE DOORS Charles was the Queen Mum’s most cherished grandchild — which is why, when his marriage ended, she never allowed Diana’s name to be uttered in her presence again . . . as revealed by her own loyal equerry
ON SATURDAY our extract from the candid memoirs of the Queen Mother’s equerry revealed what she really thought of the Germans. Today, in the second and final part, we find out her typically blunt views on Diana, Andrew and Fergie . . .
FOR all the friendliness and warmth which made her so popular, there was a streak of steel in the Queen Mother and I got a glimpse of what it could be like to cross her shortly after I began working for her in the summer of 1994.
Most world leaders would have been lucky to get ten minutes alone in her presence but as her equerry — her fixer and organiser — I would be on my own with her for at least half an hour every day and she took a keen interest in what I got up to in my private life.
I was then a 26-year- old bachelor and she would always quiz me about what I had done with my weekend off and whether I had met any girls.
‘Did you get lucky?’ she would ask. I didn’t suppose for a moment that our respective definitions of ‘getting lucky’ were remotely the same, though.
It was perhaps the informality of these conversations that lulled me into overstepping the mark when, just a few weeks into the job, I asked whether she had seen Jonathan Dimbleby’s television documentary about Prince Charles broadcast the night before.
It included the now famous interview in which Charles admitted that he had been unfaithful to Princess Diana and his grandmother’s reaction to my question evoked the description of her by the historian Sir Roy Strong, a frequent lunch guest at Clarence House.
‘Her beguiling mask of humorous charm was belied by the determined set of the lips,’ he wrote of my new employer, and the look the Queen Mother gave me that day could have frozen fire. There was a smile there but she spoke through gritted teeth and her eyes narrowed slightly as she said: ‘ Some things are best not discussed.’
She meant that Charles shouldn’t have done the interview and, probably more pointedly, that I shouldn’t be asking her about it.
It was a particularly sensitive subject because Charles was clearly far and away her favourite grandchild, and it seemed to me that he had a far cosier relationship with his grandmother than he did with the Queen.
All the formality surrounding the monarch meant that, no matter how much he wanted to, he just couldn’t get close to her. That’s presumably why, whenever he saw me, all he talked about was his grandmother, never his mother.
For her part, while she had all the time in the world for Charles, it was quite clear that the Queen Mother had no love at all for the Princess of Wales.
Once Diana split from Charles, she was very much persona non
grata, and I never again heard her name mentioned by, or in front of, the Queen Mum, not even when I saw her a couple of months after Diana’s death, by which time I had left her employ.
The Royal Family had a tendency just to make the best out of a bad situation and soldier on, which is what the Queen Mother did best. But Charles seemed less well equipped to cope with those horrendous years in which his vengeful wife seemed determined to stick the knife in at every available opportunity.
In August 1995, I accompanied the Queen Mother to Birkhall, the grand hunting lodge which is part of the Balmoral estate, for her annual summer break. I was always first down for breakfast, making sure that all her guests had everything they needed, and one morning I was joined by Charles, who had come up to do a bit of sketching in the hills and escape all the newspaper stories about his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, which was supposedly still a secret, albeit a very badly kept one.
As I sat eating my breakfast, he started going through the morning papers and suddenly his face contorted into a pained expression as he spotted yet more embarrassing revelations in one or other of the tabloids.
‘Oh, bloody hell, these bloody people! Why don’t they just leave me a-bloody-lone?’ he cried, slamming his fists on the table.
I tried to look as sympathetic as possible, especially when he kept turning to me and saying ‘Look at them, look at them,’ and pointing at the paper. But what could I say? I got on with my breakfast quietly, letting him ride it out as my cereal bowl jumped up and down.
I would never have worked for Charles at that time, not even for double the money I was on at Clarence House.
His separation from Princess Diana polarised their staff, who had no choice but to take sides, and if you walked into any of his offices you could easily witness something being thrown at someone in anger.
Even the Prince would pick things up and launch them at one of his staff if that person had done something wrong, or said something inappropriate to the Press.
Equally, being Princess Diana’s equerry would have been the job from hell because she was then on the verge of a complete breakdown. She regularly went off into London alone, without any bodyguards, sparking mass panic among those back at Kensington Palace who would launch a hunt to find her.
I remember one of the Queen Mother’s chauffeurs driving through Chelsea and, quite by chance, spotting Diana trying to cross the road alone.
He pulled over and said, ‘Ma’am, jump in now,’ and in she hopped, to be taken back to the Palace.
From there she would telephone the wives of certain members of her own staff at all times of the day and night, insinuating that their husband was having an affair and making all sorts of wild accusations, such as: ‘Do you know where he was yesterday evening?’
It was all totally unfounded, and her equerry was forced to pick up the pieces until eventually he could take no more and left. He was one of the most stressed people I met in the royal employ.
Diana’s leaks to the Press about Charles’s private life drove him to despair, but his staff could forgive his occasional bouts of bad temper because he was usually so engag-
‘Her eyes narrowed and the look she gave me could have frozen fire’
ing and funny. Most of the time he was lovely to work for, unlike Prince Andrew who, in all honesty, wasn’t a particularly nice person.
Once he berated his equerry Rupert Maitland-Titterton because the train they were scheduled to catch from Birmingham station had been cancelled and the next wasn’t due to leave for an hour.
‘Why can’t they divert that one over there?’ he screamed, pointing at a random train and presumably imagin- ing that all those planning to travel on it would happily abandon their journey for his convenience.
While Charles regarded the Queen Mother’s household as her companions, Andrew perceived the staff as mere employees who were to be treated as such. He visited Clarence House about once a month, and I nearly told him where to go on one occasion when he demanded that I wrap something for him. ‘You!’ he barked and, pointing to whatever it was, said: ‘Wrap that!’
By then, Andrew and his wife Sarah Ferguson had announced their separation but they kept seeing each other on and off for ages afterwards and I remember the Queen Mum sighing and saying to me: ‘You know, Andrew does love her so.’
You could see that regardless of everything Sarah Ferguson had done, despite all the shame she had brought on the Royals with her affair and her gaffes, the Queen Mother was still quite fond of her because of the joy she brought to Andrew.
In her eyes, if you were happy with someone, it didn’t really matter about anything else, just so long as love and happiness prevailed.
AdAPted from Behind Palace doors by Colin Burgess, published by John Blake at £8.99. © Colin Burgess 2017. to buy a copy for £6.74 call 0844 571 0640 or visit www.mailbookshop.co.uk. P&P is free on orders over £15. Offer ends May 1.
‘Despite everything, she was still quite fond of Fergie’