Paul Burrell worked alongside Princess Diana for ten years until her untimely death, and in his new book, he recalls an extraordinary encounter with future king, Charles
A former royal butler has recalled the extraordinary moment he found King Charles – the then Prince of Wales – on the floor wearing a silk dressing gown covered in salad dressing.
At the time, Charles was married to the late Princess Diana; the royal couple were married from 1981 until 1996 and it was an infamously tumultuous union.
Paul Burrell worked as Princess Diana’s butler for a decade, from 1987 until her death in 1997. He first joined the royal household serving as a butler at Highgrove House and later at Kensington Palace, and remained in Diana’s service until her death in a Paris car crash in August 1997.
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As such, he had a front row seat when it came to Charles and Diana’s marriage. And in his new book, The Royal Insider: My Life with the Queen, the King and Princess Diana , he recounts the remarkable moment he walked in on Charles covered in condiment.
In an interview to promote the book with the Mirror’s Jess Boulton, Paul recalled finding Charles on the floor next to an upturned card table, wearing a silk dressing gown covered in salad dressing. Diana was nowhere to be seen.
“He tried to make an excuse and say, ‘Well, I’m terribly sorry. It’s, er, I seem to have caught my sleeve on the card table and up it went’. Of course, I knew that wasn’t the real truth. That was his way of saying, ‘I’m so embarrassed about what’s happening and what’s happened to this, this beautiful dinner, which you’ve set out for me. I don’t know any other way to explain it’.”
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Paul continued: “The true story is that they had an almighty row, and Diana must have upturned the card table with all the salad dressings and everything on it, and stormed upstairs. The rows happened on most weekends they were together – there was plate-smashing arguments, storming out of rooms, both by both the Prince and the Princess.
According to the former royal staffer, Charles and Diana were opposites, adding that when he first got to know them in 1987 they were “bouncing off each other in a very negative way, because they both knew the marriage was over but were trying desperately to hold it together.”
And while the couple frequently had explosive rows, Paul, 67, clarified: “Nobody was ever hurt [in their rows]. There was never any physical violence. But Diana was so frustrated by Charles’ manner and the fact that he was seeing Camilla Parker Bowles, our future queen, and that she just could not get through to him.
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“Charles was Prince of Wales. He was going to be king, one day, so he made all the rules. All his rules stood. None of Diana’s wishes seemed to carry any weight, and this is the only way that she could get through to him, by being demonstrative, by being in his face.”
Charles and Diana lived largely separate lives from 1986 and officially split in 1992 – which later became known as the late Queen’s Annus Horribilis. That year the monarch witnessed the breakdown of three of her four children’s marriages: the end of Prince Charles’ relationship with Princess Diana, Princess Anne’s divorce from Captain Mark Phillips, and Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson separation after five years of marriage. Her beloved Windsor Castle also caught fire.
The Royal Insider: My Life with the Queen, the King and Princess Diana by Paul Burrell is out today, Thursday, September 11 (Sphere)
