Diana’s obsession with married dad who dumped her
Friend on scorned royal
THE numerous malicious calls to Oliver Hoare’s home in the middle of the night came from Princess Diana.
She was deeply in love with him and could not understand being dropped A FRIEND ON DIANA AFTER OLIVER DUMPED HER, REFUSING TO LEAVE WIFE
And the millionaire Old Etonian, whose death was announced yesterday, always knew exactly who made them.
But he tried to protect his family from learning of his affair with Diana, who made the calls after he dumped her.
With his death from cancer at 73, discreet Oliver has taken the full story of their tempestuous relationship to his grave.
But he never knew Diana was sitting outside his house making the calls on her mobile.
Last night one of her closest friends revealed the extraordinary truth behind the calls, which were investigated by the Metropolitan Police in 1995.
Her confidante said: “Diana was very naughty. She would drive to his house and park up outside and then call his house phone from her mobile.
“She’d do it in the middle of the night, so she could watch the lights in the house go on as he scrambled to the phone. She would be there for hours, watching and calling.
“She knew she couldn’t be with Hoare, because he was married. And while he might have been a gentleman, and a very entertaining one at that, it was his wife who actually had the money.
GAMES
“Diana would always say, ‘I know he will never leave his wife’. But she wasn’t used to not getting her way. So she would enjoy taunting him and reminding him she was there.
“She even asked her staff to ring his house number for her. She’d say, “Ring that number and then hang up’. Of course, no one knew then what they were doing then.
“Diana was playing games in the relationship, but she enjoyed it. He was playing with fire when he started dating a princess, and he should have known he could get burnt.”
Now, with Oliver’s death at his home in France, other friends have recalled their tempestuous relationship.
Their affair was so passionate that Diana used to dream of running away with him.
And Oliver used to hide in a pal’s car boot to get smuggled into Kensington Palace for secret trysts. On one infamous occasion Oliver, enjoying a cigar after a night of passion, triggered the fire alarm at the palace.
It set off the sprinklers and staff found him naked and sheepishly hiding behind a bay tree in the garden.
He was told: “Mr Hoare, I think it’s time you went home, don’t you?” But once Oliver, a wealthy art expert, had decided to dump her, Diana became the ultimate woman scorned.
Fuelled by jealousy and Oliver’s decision to stay with his wife, she launched a vitriolic series of more than 300 nuisance calls to his family home.
A friend said: “These calls showed the sheer depth and intensity of their rela- tionship. She was deeply in love with him and could not understand being dropped. Oliver was very cool, and the incident involving the post-coital cigar setting off the alarms has gone down as one of the great anecdotes.”
Diana’s friend Lady Elsa Bowker once recalled that she “daydreamed of living in Italy with the handsome Hoare”.
Lady Bowker, who was 92 when she died in 2000 and had no children of her own, was a second mother to Diana.
She knew Diana was “infatuated” with the married dad-of-three, embarking on a passionate four-year relationship
during her failing marriage to Prince Charles, which ended in divorce in August 1996. Diana’s affair with Oliver began after her father’s death in 1992.
He was just one of a string of lovers she took during her marriage. They included close protection officer Barry Mannakee, heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, England rugby captain Will Carling, lifelong pal James Gilbey and Dodi Fayed.
Oliver was also a close friend of Charles, who once used his house in France to recover after a polo accident.
He was a student at Sorbonne University in Paris, before joining Christie’s auction house and going on to become a specialist in Islamic art. Diana’s friend confirmed Oliver occasionally sneaked into the palace in a car boot, but added: “He was a gentleman, so he would have been less pleased to get in the boot than [lover] James Hewitt or Hasnat Khan.
“You knew when Hoare would be coming to visit because it was one of the few times Diana would order in champagne. She didn’t drink, but she’d always get a bottle of Krug on ice for him.
“They would love a quiet dinner together. They were quite boring when they got together, but Diana liked that.
“She liked having someone by her side, who worshipped her. She would dream of setting up home in Italy, then she wanted a chateau in France. For a while it was America. But when she realised all his toys were paid for by his wife, she knew it would never happen.”
Oliver bought Diana a gold bracelet that she kept until she died in 1997. The friend said Prince Charles knew of the affair, adding: “It was an open secret.
“And Charles knew. But what could he say? He wasn’t in a position to comment.”