WAS IT REALLY LOVE?
Just how close did Diana become to the men she turned to as her marriage fell apart? Here, those she confided in at the time give their intimate insights...
MARKING Diana’s reinvention 25 years ago, our series continues with the other men in her life. James Hewitt felt used by her, she stalked Oliver Hoare and became infatuated with Hasnat Khan. And then there was Dodi, the playboy. All her relationships with men were fraught with drama as she tried to fill the lonely void in her life, as those closest to her reveal... ‘Diana was flirtatious but never with me. There were risqué jokes on tour, but I was very aware of the line you wouldn’t cross and I didn’t want to be the subject of any below- stairs gossip. I knew exactly what my boundaries were. And if you look at what happened to Barry Mannakee...
‘I didn’t know him as he was a bodyguard before me, but he was in a similar situation to me. He worked with William and Harry and to a lesser degree with Diana. He was a shoulder to cry on in the same way I was and that’s acceptable, it’s part of the job. The one mistake he made was that at Kensington Palace he was seen talking with Diana in her drawing room on her sofa, platonically no doubt. But when that happens you have a butler, a chef, the
She didn’t want to be single for ever ‘I’d come in on a Monday and there were cigarette butts in my kitchen bin, so I knew Hasnat had been’ DARREN McGRADY, PERSONAL CHEF
dresser, the ladies-in-waiting who will think this isn’t right. That wouldn’t be a place for staff to talk to her. That information was taken back to the prince who wanted to know why the bodyguard was talking to his wife in her drawing room. Within days Barry was removed and sent back to policing duties and tragically six months later he died in a motorcycle accident.
‘The gossip was that he was having an affair with Diana. I asked her, “Did you have a relationship with him?” She said, “No I didn’t. How can I have a relationship with one of you lot when everybody is looking at what I’m doing? Yes, I did speak to him a lot and he was very helpful and I got to like him very much indeed, and then everyone got jealous of the relationship I had with him and in the end they got rid of him.” I believed her.’ ‘She asked my advice about lots of things including heart surgeon Hasnat Khan – she was a good friend of Jemima Khan’s and confided in her too. She asked me about the traditions in Pakistan – what to wear, their customs and what it was like. I remember when she got her decree absolute from Charles, she called me up in tears. I said, “You’ll be fine.” Then after a moment she collected herself and said, “Well, I suppose £21 million is not bad for an ex- nanny,” which I thought was cute.’ ‘ I didn’t think Diana loved Hasnat Khan. I thought she liked him. She was fascinated more by what he did because she always wanted to turn up in operating theatres. She was intrigued by all that. He was a caring guy but it was his profession that was more interesting than anything else.’ ‘I cooked for Hasnat. He liked Indian food, the curries and spices, so the princess suddenly started asking for a chicken curry at the weekend. I said, “But why, you don’t eat chicken curry?” I didn’t know what was going on for a while. I’d come in on Monday and there were cigarette butts in my kitchen bin, so I knew Hasnat had been.
‘She thought the world of him. Her mother and father had split up and she was looking for a father figure in Prince Charles, who had already found Camilla. Then the princess found the person she really did love, but she couldn’t marry him as she was the wrong faith. She became friends with Jemima Khan and went to Lahore and did events there. She did her best but it was difficult. You knew what she was doing but it was not the right thing and so sad.’ ‘Hasnat Khan was a very important person in her life. She felt betrayed by James Hewitt, but she had adored him. She was with him when I met her in 1989. At that point Charles was with Camilla, but because we didn’t think Charles and Diana would get divorced I felt Hewitt was quite good for her in many ways. He gave her some love which she desperately needed. Hasnat was much more intelligent, and that’s what she admired: his brains. He was beyond the ego. For him, it was the humanitarian side. It was like, “I’m here to heal.” She found that deeply attractive.’ ‘She wanted a bit of ordinariness, so she started going out in disguise. She loved going to jazz clubs with Hasnat. One day she was waiting for him at South Kensington Tube station in disguise and she rang me saying, “I overheard a man nearby saying, ‘Cor, I’d like to give her one,’ meaning me.” She thought it was so funny and wondered what they would have said if they’d known who she was.
‘She was very much in love with Hasnat and desperately wanted to marry him and have a daughter. They were together for over two years. When her divorce came through Hasnat was ready to take the relationship a step further; he had refused to have a physical relationship while she was still married. She dreamed of living in a three-up three-down semi with Hasnat. She met all his family, and his grandmother would write to her and call her The Tigress as a term of affection.’ ‘I’m not sure if Diana would have married Hasnat Khan, or whether she just wanted to help his career. But it is true that when she met Dr Christiaan Barnard at a dinner she told him she wanted to marry Khan and have two daughters. Later on she contacted Dr Barnard about job possibilities abroad for Hasnat and invited him to Kensington Palace to discuss it. The problem was Hasnat didn’t want to leave England as he was finishing his PhD under Magdi Yacoub, so he was furious with her when he found out.’ ‘In June 1997 we discussed if she’d get married again. She said Harry was always asking her to have another baby because he was fed up with being the youngest. But it was a bit difficult, she told him, because she wasn’t married. She said she’d love more children, and she didn’t see herself being single forever. Harry wanted her to get married again, but William didn’t. He wanted Diana to be all there for him. Then she said, “Well, I have to marry someone who’s prepared to cope with me.” Meanwhile, of course, she had the idea of marrying Hasnat Khan all the time in her mind, but hadn’t told me about this. We talked about the sort of person she could marry, and I said she needed a young American with a huge estate. She said she didn’t want to take any favours from anyone by using their place to go with her children but she did say, “I’m going to take them to America this summer. They love America, and the people are nice to us there.”’ ‘The biggest mistake she made was to use a go-between when things went wrong between her and Hasnat. The first was Martin Bashir, who we called The Poison Dwarf. He said to her butler Paul Burrell that if she liked Pakistani men that much, why didn’t she go for him? Then Paul became the intermediary, but in my view he tried to keep everyone out of her life. There was a dresser she loved who always put everything neat and tidy in the right drawers, then suddenly everything was in the wrong drawers, as if she’d been sabotaged. Diana didn’t know this so she sacked her. I believe it was Burrell. Anyone Diana got close to he tried to stop it. He tried to end our relationship too. He photocopied every letter she wrote and even practised her handwriting. She found him photocopying once and tried to get rid of him, but he was there the next morning begging for his job back. I’m convinced he eavesdropped on our phone conversations too, we could hear the clicks on the line.’ ‘I remember when it was revealed in an article that she was having an affair with Will Carling. I was cupping a patient [upturned cups are placed on the skin to create suction and increase blood flow] and she was saying she thought it odd that Diana could have an affair with him. I was a bit cheeky, and I rang Diana while the cups were in place waiting to work, and put her on speakerphone. “Darling, is it true you’re having an affair with Will Carling?” I said. And through the speakerphone she said, “Absolutely not.” The cups nearly flew off my patient’s back when she recognised the voice!’ Diana was a great self-dramatiser and could be self-centred because in her unhappiness she was often desperate, like when Oliver Hoare’s wife had thrown him out. One evening his wife was away so Oliver had to be with their sick daughter. Diana was so jealous that she suspected it was an excuse to see his wife so, as he was driving her home
she jumped out of the car in a traffic jam in Sloane Square and disappeared. Oliver was so worried he spent three hours driving around looking for her and never got to see his daughter. He finally found Diana crying her eyes out in Kensington Gardens.’
SIMONE SIMMONS Healer
‘I would tell her the feedback I was getting at our sessions, often about her relationships; she didn’t always want to hear what I had to say but I told her anyway. “You don’t have to say it like that,” she would say. And I would reply, “But there’s no other way of saying it.” I was very blunt. I told her there was someone in her life who was no good for her, who treated her like another notch on his bedpost – that was Oliver Hoare. I told her that she shouldn’t expect him to make any commitment to her and she looked at me daggers.’
DEBBIE FRANK Astrologer
‘A big draw for her with Dodi was the family set-up because she longed to be part of a family. She spent time with them because there were very few places she could go to. Various Hollywood stars had lent their Malibu mansions to her in the past but there was always an issue. You’re living a Hollywood life, and she didn’t really want that. Hollywood stars used to make her giggle. She saw them as children because they’re just so taken in by the glamour. She thought it overwhelming, and said, “It’s just too much, Debbie.”’
DR JAMES COLTHURST Diana’s confidant and old friend
‘My last conversation with Diana was about three months before she died, and she was almost incoherent because she was crying with laughter. She’d been given a silver tablet, which I assume was from Dodi, with a poem engraved on it, which she regarded as the height of ridiculousness. When the words poem, then tablet, then silver came out she was howling with laughter. She’d known Dodi since they were children and their dads were mates, so I think the relationship was pumped up to more than it was but it wasn’t how she talked of it all.’
ROBERT LACEY
Biographer and historian ‘I don’t believe Dodi was a love match in the long-term sense. The few comments she made about it before her death to her girlfriends suggest it was a summer fling. And, perhaps, the idea of sticking it to the Royal Family appealed to her sense of the mischievous. I don’t believe anybody who knows anything about Dodi can believe it would have lasted, but one can see how it appealed as a summer fling.’
DEBBIE FRANK Astrologer
That last summer Diana wasn’t ostensibly discombobulated. She wasn’t crying down the phone, she wasn’t falling apart. But something inside her was distressed. She was on the hop thinking, “How do I manage this? What do I do?” She was in a sort of reactive state, and part of that was getting into this relationship with Dodi Fayed. I think she would have ended up with Dodi. Diana was very astute at assessing people. She said to me about Dodi, “You know what? He’s got all the toys but he’s actually a very kind, gentle, sensitive soul.” And that fascinated her because I think she was comparing him to Charles. Charles may be a kind, gentle, sensitive soul, but she did not experience him as that.’
SIMONE SIMMONS Healer
‘Her relationship with Dodi wasn’t serious, they’d only known each other 15 days. He was a cocaine addict and was being manipulated by his father. Diana was trying to get him off drugs. Besides, she didn’t like hirsute men. She was not attracted to his hairy back.’
DARREN McGRADY Personal chef
‘I never cooked for James Hewitt – I was just the chef so all I know is what I saw and what I heard. She never talked about her love life and I never asked, but I do believe that she was just trying to play Dodi and make Hasnat jealous so he’d say, “I want you, I want you.” Dodi had his own problems, and I heard her saying, “This isn’t right, I didn’t enjoy being there.”’
ANDREW MORTON Author of Diana: Her True Story
‘She told me she regretted the Martin Bashir Panorama interview. It was the James Hewitt part that very much upset William and Harry because, in all innocence, they thought he was her riding teacher and he taught the boys to ride, so they didn’t realise they’d been used as pawns by their mother. William didn’t speak to her for a few weeks afterwards.’
‘I told her Oliver Hoare treated her like another notch on the bedpost and she looked at me daggers’ SIMONE SIMMONS, HEALER