Who knows if I’m even your real father? King’s ‘poor taste joke’ that upset Harry
PRINCE Harry uses his memoir to discuss his mother’s affair with Major James Hewitt and claims Charles joked: ‘Who knows if I’m even your real father?’
In Spare, the Duke of Sussex says Charles ‘liked to tell anecdotes’ and that ‘one of his best’ was a story of a visit to a psychiatric hospital where he met a man claiming to be the Prince of Wales.
According to the duke’s recounting of the story, Charles wagged his finger at the patient and said ‘I am the Prince of Wales’ only for the man to ‘respond with the same gesture’.
Harry says that Charles then joked: ‘Who knows if I’m even your real father? Perhaps your father really is in Broadmoor, my dear son!’ Harry wrote that the joke was ‘in poor taste’ given a rumour that his real father was James Hewitt.
Major Hewitt had a five-year affair with Princess Diana when he was a young Household Cavalry officer, from 1986, after they met at a cocktail party and he became her riding instructor, to 1991.
He was often sneaked into Kensington Palace in scenes recreated in Netflix drama The Crown.
This was confirmed by the Princess of Wales during the now- infamous 1995 Panorama interview with disgraced journalist Martin Bashir.
When Major Hewitt went public with the relationship in 1989, it hurt Diana, she admitted. She told Panorama: ‘Yes, I adored him, yes, I was in love with him, but I was very let down.’
In the same interview she revealed William had comforted her with a box of chocolates after news of the affair broke.
Diana had previously told biographer
Andrew Morton of the fling for his 1992 book Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words.
In it, Morton wrote: ‘Hewitt, a keen polo player with the laconic humour and reserve reminiscent of a 1930s matinee idol, taught William and Harry the finer points of horsemanship during his visits to Highgrove.’
Harry’s resemblance to the Army officer led to claims he was a product of the relationship. In his memoirs, the prince says the rumours continued even though Diana did not meet the cavalry officer ‘until long after I was born’.
He adds that if Charles thought anything about Major Hewitt, he ‘kept it to himself’.