Wills signs up for Diana’s gym as he battles his ‘dad bod’
AFTER quitting the healthy country air of Norfolk and his job as an air ambulance pilot, it seems Prince William is worried that he’s starting to lose his fitness – and could even develop a dreaded, chubby ‘dad bod’.
So to stave off the effects of a sedentary city lifestyle, I can reveal the soon-to-be father of three has signed on for sessions at an exclusive gym – the Chelsea Harbour Club. The fitness centre was a regular haunt for his mother Diana in the 1990s, who was often seen there in her gym kit after her marriage to Prince Charles collapsed.
William, 35, visited the club after dropping Prince George off at Battersea for his first day at Thomas’s school. However, getting fit wasn’t the main thing on his mind when he was shown round. He asked staff if they still made the special cookies Diana used to buy him as a treat when they went there together. Says my source: ‘He visited the cafe and told staff that Diana would buy a cookie for him as a treat if he’d been behaving well. He still remembers how special they were. The chefs started flapping, saying they’d find the recipe and rustle one up right away, but he said he didn’t want any special treatment.’
It was at the club’s cafe that Diana met England rugby captain Will Carling in 1995 and began a ‘close friendship’ which was never officially confirmed as a romance but resulted in his divorce from then-wife Julia a year later.
Despite William’s fond cookie memories, the gym was the scene of some harrowing experiences for the young princes and their mother.
Prince Harry recently recalled a painful episode at the club in a BBC documentary, saying: ‘She was so fed up with being chased … on the way to the Harbour Club, she jumped out of the car, and went running up to these guys and shouted and screamed at them while they took photographs of her.
‘All I could hear was screaming. William and I looked at each other and stared out of the window. It was hard.’