Everything Royal

Tuesday November 30, 04:03 PM

Bodyguard doubts Princess Diana's claim that lover was 'bumped off'

LONDON (AFP) - A former bodyguard of Princess Diana said he doubted that one of her alleged lovers had been "bumped off" -- a claim she made in never-before-seen videotapes broadcast in the United States.

NBC television broadcast video Monday of Princess Diana talking candidly about her sex life with Prince Charles and her vain efforts to enlist Queen Elizabeth's help in saving their marriage. The tapes, recorded between 1992 and 1993 by her voice coach Peter Settelen, also contain suggestions by Diana that a lover on her palace staff was murdered after their affair was discovered.

Monday was the first of a two-part broadcast by NBC, which bought the tapes from Settelen. Diana died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

In next week's program, she is said to recount how she fell in love with a member of her palace staff, presumed to be royal policeman Barry Mannakee, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1987. "It was all found out and he was chucked out. And then he was killed," she says. "And that was the biggest blow of my life, I must say. And I think he was bumped off." In London on Tuesday, Diana's former protection officer Ken Wharfe said he believed there was no truth in her suggestion. "Of course I don't think he was killed. There was no reason for him to be killed," he told GMTV television. "He died tragically in a road traffic accident."

Wharfe, who wrote a controversial book about his years guarding Diana and her two sons, added: "Diana sadly was prone to listen to all the sycophantics (sic) that existed and juggle with other methods like tarot cards." Wharfe said there was "no doubt" Mannakee was "pretty close" to the princess and was a "confidant" of hers but added that care should be taken when talking about a sexual relationship. Wharfe also questioned Settelen's motives for letting the tapes be aired, accusing him of exploiting them for financial gain.

"If, as he said, it was to coach Diana into making her a better speaker, then I don't see the relevance," he said. "Peter Settelen is using them for one reason and one reason only: for financial advantage," Wharfe added, saying Diana was "incredibly vulnerable" at the time the tapes were made.

"Any comfort that could be taken, she would take it."

In the tapes broadcast Monday, the late princess spoke frankly about her ill-fated marriage with the heir to the British crown, saying she met him only 13 times before their wedding and their sex life was limited. "It was odd. ... There was never a requirement for it from him. Once every three weeks about, and I kept thinking it followed a pattern. "He used to see his lady once every three weeks before we got married," she said, a reference to the prince's lover and current companion, Camilla Parker Bowles.

Diana also recalled how, on learning that her husband was still having an affair with Parker Bowles, she confronted the queen in 1986. "I went to the Top Lady, and I'm sobbing. And I said, 'What do I do? I'm coming to you. What do I do?'" she says. "And she said, 'I don't know what you should do. Charles is hopeless.' And that was it. That was help!"

Confronting Charles also got her nowhere. "He said, 'Well I refuse to be the only Prince of Wales who never had a mistress,'" she recalled.

Diana worked with Settelen for 16 months, training for more than 120 hours and writing and rehearsing more than a dozen speeches, including a passionate talk about bulimia widely regarded to be her most successful public address. The videos were part of Settelen's method of interviewing his clients.

On the tapes, Diana spoke of her unhappy childhood, saying she was always seen by her family as "thick" and recalling how she almost stopped speaking after the break-up of her parents' marriage when she was six. Although "not interested in men as such," at one of her early meetings with Charles she told him how "pathetic" he had looked walking alone at the funeral of his favorite uncle. "I said, 'You know, it's ghastly. You need someone beside you' ... whereupon he leaped upon me and started kissing me and everything," she said. "And he was all over me for the rest of the evening. Followed me around, everything. A puppy. Yes I was flattered, but I was very puzzled."

Of her treatment by the royal family, Diana said they had been very good to her prior to the wedding, but "it changed when I was a daughter-in-law."

"But I do feel," she added, "that I've won them at their own game -- now."

Diana in New Tape Suspects Lover 'Bumped Off'

NEW YORK (Nov. 27) - The NBC television network will broadcast a never-before-seen videotape of Diana, Princess of Wales, next week in which she said she suspects that a member of her staff with whom she fell in love was "bumped off."

Candid Diana Interview

NBC said Friday the two-part program, starting next Monday, includes excerpts of interviews Diana recorded with communications consultant Peter Settelen in her living room, discussing her childhood, marriage and struggle with bulimia.

Earlier this year NBC aired audio tapes Diana secretly recorded for a 1992 book that exposed the turmoil of her marriage to Prince Charles, whom she divorced in 1996.

The princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

NBC said Diana met Settelen in September 1992, in the aftermath of the book by Andrew Morton, and had engaged him to train her in public speaking, a process that involved an on-camera interview to inspire confidence. Excerpts of the program released in advance include comments by Diana on the lack of sympathy from her mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth when Diana went to her having discovered that Prince Charles was having an affair.

NBC said one section of the interview was "on falling in love with a member of her palace staff, presumed to be Royal Policeman Barry Mannakee, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1987." "It was all found out and he was chucked out," Diana is quoted as saying. "And then he was killed. And that was the biggest blow of my life, I must say. And I think he was bumped off. But, um, there we are. I don't ... we'll never know, he was the greatest fellow I've ever had."

The two-hour special, which also features an interview with Settelen, is to be broadcast in two parts, on Nov. 29 and Dec. 6. "This unusual tape, recorded in Diana's living room, hidden for years after her death, and fought over for months in the British courts, offers a view of the princess quite different from the formal public face she usually put forth," NBC said.

DIANA HAD ASECRET ABORTION
Sat Nov 27 2004 22:15:10 ET
SUNDAY MAIL

DIANA, Princess of Wales had a secret abortion while having an affair before she and Charles were divorced, a new book sensationally claims.

The book says that Diana freaked out when she learned she was pregnant in 1994 and became almost unhinged with misery and grief .

At the time, the Princess was having an affair with wealthy art dealer Oliver Hoare. According to The Real Diana, by Royal author and socialite Lady Colin Campbell, she wanted to keep the baby and told friends wistfully: Suppose it s a girl. But distraught as she was, she knew what she had to do .

Diana was separated from Prince Charles at the time but not divorced. The author quotes one of her principal sources, an earl s daughter, as saying: How could she have a baby? She wasn t divorced. She couldn t have an illegitimate baby. She couldn t do that to William and Harry. The scandal would ve been too much.

The revelations, backed up by other sources who guessed Diana s secret, throw fresh light on her erratic behaviour at the time, which has often bemused Royal observers.

Lady Colin Campbell refuses to name the earl s daughter, but The Mail on Sunday under-stands it is Lady Victoria Waymouth, who died two months ago, and was a close friend of the Hoares. The daughter of the 9th Earl of Hard-wicke, Lady Victoria talks in the book of the anonymous calls Diana made to Mr Hoare s home which led to his wife calling the police. But she says these were made after Diana became almost unhinged by her worry over the pregnancy and misery over the abortion.

The book notes how a tearful Diana made arrangements for the abortion and used as cover for her absence an appointment with her former financial adviser and close friend Joseph Sanders, who died last year.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Sanders ex--wife, Anita, said her husband had told her about the abortion and his role in keeping it quiet after she guessed what had happened. Diana would ring Joseph every day, sometimes in the middle of the night, Mrs Sanders said. They were very close and Joseph idolised her. He was discreet and wouldn t in the normal way tell me everything that Diana said. But I guessed what had happened and got it out of him.

Mrs Sanders, who also supports another allegation in the book, that Diana had an adulterous affair with an aristocrat, added: Of course, she could never have had the baby, it would have been madness.

The involvement of City investment special-ist Mr Sanders and Diana began in 1990, but has not been chronicled to any extent, a testimony, according to his wife, to his discretion and the way Diana compartmentalised her life.

The book stops short of naming the father of the child. But it claims the notorious nuisance calls she made to Mr Hoare in 1994 began only after she got pregnant.

It has always been assumed they were motivated solely by rejection but now it is revealed that another factor was driving Diana.

According to Lady Colin Campbell, Diana s misery over the abortion had altered her state of mind to such an extent that she wasn t responsible for her actions...she couldn t help herself.

Day and night, day after day, night after night, she d sit on that telephone, calling Oliver s house 30, 40, 50 times. She used her telephone. She d go out to the call boxes on the High Street (near Kensington Palace). She d call from her sister Sarah s house. She was desperate.

The book describes how in the throes of her passion for Hoare, Diana once slipped out of Kensington Palace wearing a pair of diamond earrings, a fur coat, the high-heeled shoes which she described as my tart s trotters and nothing else.

Police were called in after a complaint from Mr Hoare s wife, Diane, and although the calls were traced to Diana s private lines at Kensington Palace no action was taken. The couple s marriage survived the crisis as did Mr Hoare s friendship with Prince Charles.

It had been through Mrs Hoare s links to the Royals, via her own wealthy family, that Oliver Hoare first met and befriended Charles and Diana.

The Mail on Sunday offered 57-year-old Mr Hoare, a dealer in Islamic art, the opportunity to speak about the abortion claim. He did not respond. The identity of the father can never be proved, of course, and it should be noted that it is far from clear whether Mr Hoare was ever even told about the abortion.

According to the book, after Diana recovered from the abortion she was overtaken with anxiety.

Lady Colin quotes Mr Sanders as saying: She was terrified the police would prosecute her for making nuisance calls. She d call every day and say the same thing. I d tell her, Don t worry. The police aren t going to prosecute you. You re the Princess of Wales. It was ages before she accepted that nothing would happen.

New York Daily News

Di on Charles: lousy lover
BY ELLEN TUMPOSKY
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

Despite Diana’s obvious charms, her husband, Charles, had sex with her only once every three weeks — and eventually not at all, late princess says on a newly surfaced video.

LONDON - Prince Charles was a "hopeless" lover who rarely slept with Princess Diana, according to a never-before-seen video to be shown next week.
The late princess also claims her husband brazenly admitted carrying on an affair with his mistress and Queen Elizabeth brushed off her complaints. Diana recalls - in the 1993 tape made by her former voice coach - how "absolutely traumatized" she was when a TV interviewer asked the newly engaged couple if they were in love and Charles replied, "Whatever 'in love' means." After their marriage, their sexual relationship was "odd," with Charles sleeping with her about once every three weeks. "It followed a pattern," she says - suggesting Charles used to see his lover, Camilla Parker Bowles, once every three weeks before he married Diana. After about four years, sex between the royal couple "fizzled out" altogether, she says.

The 83-minute video will be shown in two hour-long specials on NBC's "Dateline" - on Monday and a week later on Dec. 6. On the tape, Diana says she confronted Charles over Parker Bowles but he said it was his birthright to fool around.

"I refuse to be the only Prince of Wales who never had a mistress," she recalls him saying. In tears, she went to the "top lady" - Queen Elizabeth - to complain about her husband, but was rebuffed. "I don't know what you should do," the queen replied, Diana says. "Charles is hopeless."

The most sinister revelation by Diana, who was killed in a 1997 car crash at age 36, concerns her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee, who she says was murdered in 1987 for having an affair with her. She calls Mannakee, a married police officer, "the greatest fella I've ever had." Mannakee was moved out of the job when rumors of a liaison with Diana surfaced. Less than a year later, he died in a mysterious motorcycle accident. "It was all found out and he was chucked out. And then he was killed. And I think he was bumped off. ... We'll never know," says Diana. She calls his death "the biggest blow of my life."

The tapes come from a collection of 20 made by Peter Settelen, 53, who was the princess' voice coach in 1992. Although Settelen had vowed never to sell them, his lawyer, Marcus Rutherford, said Settelen changed his mind partly because of his mounting legal bills. But Rutherford, who wouldn't reveal what NBC paid for the tapes, said it's better for people to hear Diana's own words than tell-all accounts by others. "She's telling her own story," Rutherford said.

Originally published on November 26, 2004

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