Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (25 page)

The Princess and her party arrived in Antigua some time after midday local time. I had arranged an aircraft from a charter airline, Carib Air, to be waiting for them there, which, after a discreet transfer, would take them on the twenty-five-minute island hop to Nevis. On arrival Dave Sharp reassured me that everything had gone smoothly. His addendum was more worrying: the press, he said, were definitely on their way; indeed, some journalists had been on the same flight from the UK. The duel between Diana and the media was about to start. As the Princess slipped away, most of the A-team of royal journalists and photographers were already out of the country, covering a New Year skiing trip which the Duchess of York and her two daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, were taking in Klosters. It took the press only a few hours to catch up with events, however. In the middle of the night they learned that Diana was on the move and predictably abandoned the Duchess, whose pulling power with the media was secondary to Diana’s by a long way. They decamped
en masse
and headed for the Caribbean with their winter ski clothes, some complete with skis.

On Nevis, in the calm before the storm, Diana quickly settled into her holiday routine. With Catherine Soames and a few well-thumbed novels of the Jackie Collins type for company, she was able to relax in the sun and, wearing her bright orange bikini, splash in the surf with her sons, and generally revel in being, effectively, single again. She knew that it would not be
long before the media pack arrived on the island, and as far as she was concerned if she was going to be photographed she was determined to look good. A golden tan was the first essential. After all, this would be the perfect opportunity to send back, in the form of front-page photographs, a ‘glad-you’re-not-here’ postcard to her estranged husband as he endured the bleak winter chill.

Diana’s daily routine was much the same as that of any other single woman on holiday with her children and a friend. She was never an early riser, and would emerge from her chalet with her patterned sarong wrapped around her waist for a private breakfast on the terrace at around 9.30 am. She did not eat much at breakfast when on holiday – a little fruit and some juice, and occasionally a cup of tea without milk – and after that would help her boys ready themselves for a morning on the beach. They would ask the hotel to prepare a picnic, and once it was ready would climb into the pickup and head for one of the deserted beaches on the island, a short distance away. An excellent swimmer, she would always be the first in the water. Although I or one of my team would be close by in case she ran into difficulties while swimming, it was never really a serious concern, but an officer would always accompany the boys as they swam and played in the warm sea. In the evenings she would eat a light meal, the menu on offer at the Montpelier being arguably the best in the region. We tended to dine all together, sharing jokes and discussing the day’s events. The boys, exhausted by their strenuous activities, would retire after the meal, leaving Diana free to chat with Catherine and me about more serious issues.

The first day on the island was media-free, but all of us knew that it would not be long before they invaded our peace. Before that peace was broken, Diana relaxed. By contrast, William and Harry were always looking for different things to do on holiday while their mother was sunbathing. They loved playing in the surf with her, but she would soon return to her chosen spot to work on her tan. Restless, they decided to kidnap some of the island’s indigenous population, although, mercifully, this did not involve abducting members of some lost tribe, but about a dozen giant toads. Harry was the instigator; he had spotted the creatures, which were about nine inches long, in the undergrowth and begged me to help him capture some. He and William had big plans for them. I told him to leave well alone, but he can be very persistent and eventually I relented, with the proviso that we put them back exactly where we found them. The boys became extremely excited and persuaded their mother and the Milnes-Gaskill children to join in the hunt in the vegetation around the Montpelier. The wretched toads proved to be difficult creatures to capture, but after several hilariously unsuccessful attempts we managed to ensnare about twelve of them. William and Harry tried to encourage their mother to help catch the toads, but she remained in the background, shrieking with laughter as we dived around the undergrowth in search of our prey.

‘What are you going to do with them now you have caught them, boys?’ Diana asked, almost dreading to think what the answer might be. ‘You’ll see, Mummy – just wait and see,’ Harry replied.

The entire party were then instructed to rendezvous on
the lush green lawn at the back of the Montpelier, where the princes’ master plan was revealed – in essence, a chance for William and Harry to make some money. After selecting the most streamlined, athletic-looking toads for themselves, the rest of us were invited to pick our runners for the ‘Nevis Toad Derby’, a race they had devised to be run over fifteen feet, and place our bets. Seconds later the bewildered amphibians came under starter’s orders, each held firmly on the start line by a hopeful gambler. At a shout of ‘Go!’ they were off, leaping the course in record time to the screams of encouragement from their backers. I am not even sure that any of the toads finished the course; most, I think, simply leapt into the undergrowth, no doubt hoping never to encounter royalty again.

This was no five-star holiday with over-attentive staff, fine cuisine and a luxury shuttle bus to and from the hotel, for Nevis then was a tropical island in its most rugged sense. Our daily treks to the beach were made in the back of the Milnes-Gaskills’ open Toyota truck. Diana would pack a picnic of just basic snacks and cold drinks, and then we would pile into the
truck with the boys’ surfboards – Mr Eames at Harrods having done his stuff – sticking out the back. On the way to the white-sanded Indian Castle Beach or Pinnys Beach we would pass through ramshackle villages and wave at the local people going about their daily lives. Sadly, this serenity was about to be shattered.

I always felt it was a little absurd how, on receiving news of Diana, the royal ratpack would drop everything, collect thousands of pounds in cash dispatched to the nearest airport
by their newspapers, and head off in search of her. They were essentially affable chaps, most of them, but ruthless when their quarry was in their sights. They were also experts in getting their own way. James Whitaker, Arthur Edwards and Kent Gavin were the leaders of the pack, but it was the quieter ones who were the most dangerous. Although the ratpack tended to work as a team (despite each being on the payroll of different news organisations), it could be a savage environment for any who defied the tribe, and God help anyone who broke their primal rules. In Klosters, as payback for having shown a certain individuality of spirit on a previous job, Arthur was given the slip by the group when they hit out for Nevis. So as the rest stole into the night, heading first for London, and then on to the Caribbean, Arthur, uninformed of the breaking story, was left to sleep on. He was apparently inconsolable the next morning when he made his usual diligent check call to
The Sun
’
s
picture desk in London, only to be told that another team had been dispatched in search of Diana hours earlier. He was ordered to stay in Switzerland to photograph the Duchess and her daughters.

And now the ratpack was about to hit Nevis. Yet whatever my fears at the time, I must give credit where it’s due: James Whitaker and his friend Kent Gavin were to be key figures in helping me arrange what the Princess herself described as one of the best holiday photo calls of her life, which saw some eighty journalists and photographers gathered on the public beaches of Nevis, frenziedly taking photographs or scribbling notes.

With the arrival of the ratpack, I found myself in an invidious
position. With no press secretary or private staff I was left to mediate between the Princess and the worst excesses of the Fourth Estate. Diana, understandably sensitive to the criticism she would receive from the Palace old guard if she pandered to the press, was initially reluctant to concede a photo call. But since she had been tracked down, I told her I had to cut a deal. She asked for a couple of days’ grace, but this was really so that she could perfect her tan in readiness for the bikini shots.

At first there had been a stand-off when the press arrived. I made it clear that the Princess regarded their presence as a gross intrusion of her privacy and that of her young sons. A few hours later, I had a taxing few minutes with James Whitaker and a
Daily Express
photographer, Michael Dunlea. James was his usual robust self, but rather to my surprise it was Michael, an excellent photojournalist with the tenacity to match his Irish name and nature, who caused me the most trouble on that day. By an unhappy chance the two of them had stumbled across Diana and her sons swimming off a public beach. Spotting the two hacks, I walked up and pleaded with them to back off, but as James plunged into one of his monologues about press freedom and public interest and I started ushering them away, Michael fired off a few shots over my shoulder, which he was perfectly within his rights to do. It was the first minor skirmish in what would quite certainly become a fullscale battle if I did not act decisively.

At that moment I knew that the press had the upper hand. With only a handful of officers, I had no realistic method of controlling nearly a hundred journalists, and because this was a private holiday, Buckingham Palace had not sent out a press
secretary, so I was left with the problem. My job was security but I knew, as on Necker, that unless I took charge of the situation the Princess would be exposed to the worst kind of press intrusion, and the holiday that she so desperately needed would be ruined. For her part, Diana, while sympathetic to the problem I faced, was not prepared to bow to the pressure, even though she knew that the ratpack had the upper hand.

‘Nobody is going to stop me swimming with my sons, Ken. They will not ruin my holiday,’ she said. (Subtext: not ‘I, Diana, will put up with it’, but ‘You, Ken, will prevent it happening’.) I agreed, adding that I would do everything in my power to avoid their stay on Nevis being wrecked. I therefore arranged to meet Kent Gavin in the bar of the island’s Four Seasons Hotel. When we duly met a few hours later, I suggested a deal if he could guarantee that everyone present would stick to it. The alternative was that the press would be blamed for wrecking the holiday, forcing Diana and her sons to return to a bleak London winter. Gavin saw the sense of this, and agreed that Fleet Street’s troops and the army of freelancers would back off, in exchange for a photo call next morning featuring the Princess and her sons in the surf. The deal was done.

It was a crucial moment. I am not and would never claim to be a public-relations expert, but I had learned a lot from working with the world’s most famous woman, watching in admiration as she manipulated some of the most cynical journalists in that cynical profession until she had them eating out of her hand. I knew most of the key players among the journalists and photographers who danced attention on her, and felt that between us we could ensure that she was shown
in the best possible light, and at the same time save her holiday. Besides, when the Princess insisted she wanted privacy, I knew her well enough to be able to tell when she really meant it, and when what she really meant was, ‘Give them the pictures and cut a deal’.

For all her fame, Diana recognised that her success lay with her ‘paying’ public. If she did not appear in the British newspapers, then her star might wane. Being popular with the masses required hard work and dedication, and she shirked neither, but it also meant that she had to be seen as a glamorous figure as well, someone to inspire ordinary people to look beyond the mundane reality of their daily lives. She often told me that she felt a duty to the countless schoolchildren, elderly women, star-struck teenage girls and infatuated men whom she counted among her army of fans. She felt that to them she was not just a Princess but an icon, and she was determined never to let them down.

‘Ken, they expect to see me. They don’t want to see me looking dowdy, they want to see me out there doing my thing,’ she would say. In all the years I was at her side, Diana never did fail her public. For her, maintaining her star status was worth all the effort. She never forgot, much less avoided, her responsibility to her loyal supporters. To have done so was simply not her style, not in her Spencer make-up. So even if she was parading on a sun-kissed beach before a horde of pressmen, she felt that she had to make an effort.

The Princess took some persuading, but once convinced, she was ready to take centre stage. After a couple of days sunbathing, she looked magnificent on the morning of the first
photo call. One memorable shot caught her as she emerged from the Caribbean surf, her bronzed skin contrasting with her orange bikini, looking absolutely sensational. Day after day she reappeared on the beach for a twenty-minute photo session, and to a man the media stuck to the deal; after each session they made themselves scarce, and the rest of the day was hers. In fact some left early so that they could send their photographs electronically back to their magazines and newspapers. ‘It doesn’t get any better than this,’ Kent Gavin said to me one morning as he and some colleagues left the beach armed with rolls of lucrative film.

Back in Britain, the newspapers delightedly printed virtually every photograph and story about the Princess on Nevis that they could get. The legendary editor of
The Sun
, Kelvin MacKenzie, wrote a leader in which he praised the press arrangements, named me and questioned the need for a Palace press officer when I seemed able both to protect and promote Diana at the same time. It was kind of him, but it was not something I had either asked for, or wanted, and retribution was not long in coming. My superiors at Scotland Yard were not amused. They questioned why I was organising the press, and reminded me, unnecessarily, that I was only there to protect the Princess, not to promote myself. This was a typical reaction at the time. Scotland Yard was no doubt being pressured by the Palace, which wanted to see the Princess’s profile lowered considerably so that the Prince could shine, with the result that I was caught in the crossfire.