Carling admits he behaved ‘stupidly’ over Princess Diana
WILL Carling has always insisted he was just good friends with Princess Diana, but the former England rugby captain has now suggested persistent rumours they enjoyed a love affair may indeed be true.
Carling, 55, who was married to TV presenter Julia at the time he met Diana, has admitted ‘stupidly doing things you shouldn’t do’.
He confesses: ‘It was a bit of a mess.’ Asked to explain, he says: ‘Just making messes of relationships because you’re sort of rudderless and you’ve lost your focus and you don’t behave well, and I didn’t.
‘Never intentionally or vindictively, I just think that was me, I just was in a bit of a mess. You’re sort of like a car that’s lost a steering wheel and you’re careering all over the place.
‘It wasn’t very pleasant; it was a fairly traumatic time.’
Asked on a podcast about the Diana rumours and the huge media interest they attracted, he replies: ‘You ended up in situations that you shouldn’t have been in. When I look back... I rented, not in my name, a flat in Covent Garden with underground parking. It didn’t have a phone in it. My parents didn’t even know where I lived. I lived there for a year and I never opened the curtains or blinds in case anyone looked in.’
Carling met Diana in 1994 while working out in the gym at Chelsea Harbour Club. She went up to him as he was doing sit-ups and joked, ‘You don’t know how to work your abdominals properly’.
It was the start of a friendship that led Diana’s critics to accuse her of being a home-wrecker, as Carling was newly married and his wife refused to weep and walk away.
When it was disclosed that her husband was visiting the Princess at Kensington Palace, his tell-tale blue Range Rover spotted in the car park, Julia publicly fired a warning shot at Diana, declaring that she had ‘picked the wrong couple’.
Julia added: ‘It would be easy to say she’s ruined my marriage, but it takes two to tango and I blame Will for getting involved in the first place.’ The following year they were divorced.