The only issue for the young and trendy revellers that had chosen this hotel bar for a night out was that there was little or no chance of William and Harry turning up. The princes have spent much of their lives surrounded by these types: hangers-on with more money than sense. Several of them worked out that our little group must be journalists and they made a beeline for our table to tell us how they went to school at Eton and were on very good terms with the young Royals.
This is the reality of life for William and Harry. Anyone they have ever met, through school, polo matches, charity events or nightclubs, claims to be friends of the princes. This is why it is so hard for the boys to make real friends. In reality they stick to a small group of trusted pals and do not trust anyone outside that select inner circle.
After a couple of hours it was definitely time for bed. I headed off in the direction of my hotel and walked up the empty streets thinking about what an early start I had. But the route took me past the only nightclub in Klosters and curiosity clearly got the better of me. I decided to visit the Casa Antica Club for a nightcap, justifying the decision on the basis that I wanted to see what Klosters’ night life was like. I had overhead several people in the last bar mention they were heading up to Casa and, as it was the town’s only nightclub, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
The club is very small and from the outside looks like all the other Swiss chalet-style properties. I walked through the entrance and into a small foyer which led into the main bar area. Here, I instantly recognized some of the characters sitting on chairs dressed in the tell-tale smart outfits of chinos, polo tops and fleece jackets. It was the Royal protection officers, several of whom I’d met while covering Prince Harry’s trip to South Africa and Mozambique three months earlier. This was clearly a sign that the boys were in the club, which came as a surprise given that tomorrow morning was the photocall and it was already well past midnight.
‘Oops, sorry, guys,’ I said as they all looked at me walking in. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t come in if the boys are here – it’s well past my bedtime anyway.’
They laughed and agreed that it was indeed a late night for them as well.
The life of a Royal protection officer is indeed a plum job within the Met Police. They get to travel the world guarding their ‘principals’ and although there is little overtime and no extra pay, they all receive an annual allowance of £15,000 for clothing. As police officers they never have to make an arrest, and because the majority of their working life is spent well outside the jurisdiction of London they simply team up with local officers, who provide the bulk of the back-up required.
The best part of being a Royal protection officer, besides the kudos of guarding the Royals, is the prospect of enjoying a lucrative security job when they take early retirement on a full pension. What wealthy Arab or billionaire businessman wouldn’t want to snap up someone whose CV boasted years of looking after the most famous family on the planet?
In my experience I have found them to be professional, polite and very good at what they do. They never like to speak to the press and, on the rare occasions when they do, remain tight-lipped and discreet as their job requires.
But there is an obvious downside to being on hand twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. When Harry is out with his pals they have to sit and wait nearby, never knowing when they will get to bed. As the minutes roll into hours, they must occasionally wish they’d never given up the regular shifts and generous overtime associated with being an ordinary police officer. I have never heard them complain, but the sight of them all soberly sitting in the foyer of yet another nightclub in the small hours of the morning was quite amusing.
‘You don’t have to leave on our account,’ said one of the more senior officers in the group. ‘I will go and see if the boys mind you being here if you like,’ he added.
This was a generous offer, given that the role of the protection team is to ensure the safety of the boys and has nothing to do with dealing with the press on their behalf.
After a few minutes the officer returned and said it was OK for me to go in. This was an offer I couldn’t refuse, because the chance of seeing William and his brother party with their pals was very rare indeed. I went into the main part of the club and went to the bar to order a drink. Although I was still in my twenties at the time I was far older than the majority of those sipping Vodka Red Bulls and drinking beer out of bottles.
The club itself was quite dark and very loud. The main bar area was in the middle of the room, with a dance floor behind and a crowded drinking area at the front. It was a tiny place and that night there was barely room to move.
Sitting on stools at the far end of the long bar were two people who were easily recognized. William and Harry were staring straight at me as I gestured to double-check they didn’t mind me being there. I could see they were both laughing at my expense as they started to mimic the clumsy hand gestures I was making in a bid to make sure I was not encroaching on their turf.
I respectfully stayed at my end of the bar and ordered a drink. If they were happy for me to be there I didn’t want to blow it by rushing over and getting in the way. Besides, if Harry wanted to let rip at me for the Nazi story, then tonight I was a sitting duck.
After a few minutes I realized I needed to use the toilet, which meant walking straight past where Harry was now sitting on his own after William had disappeared into an adjoining room. My respect for their personal space was one thing, but it didn’t extend as far as deciding to wet myself in the corner of a crowded club. So I slowly made my way through the crowds in the direction of the toilets, which were up a flight of stairs directly behind the barstool where Harry was sitting.
As I got right up close to the young Royal he smiled and said hello. By now I had no time to get into conversation with anyone because my priority was to answer the call of nature. But I had just enough time to say hello back and looked at Harry to joke: ‘It’s very late, are you sure you’re going to be there for the photocall tomorrow?’
Harry grinned and replied: ‘I’ll be there, with a glass of brandy, smoking a big fat cigar with my dad.’
I laughed and nodded back at what was clearly a risky comment from a prince everybody in the media had been branding boozy. I carried on past and went upstairs into the gents toilets.
Within seconds, as I stood at the urinal, I was aware of a flash going off. Looking round I saw Harry holding a small disposable camera and falling about laughing. He had followed me upstairs and decided it would be funny to get a bit of revenge on a member of the press by taking my picture for a change.
‘Leave me alone, you paparazzi scumbag,’ I barked at Harry, which only caused him to laugh even more. The other half a dozen or so people in the gents heard the exchange and they too started to laugh.
This candid moment was, I was later to learn, typical of the third in line to the throne. He has a very down-to-earth, spontaneous sense of humour and an opportunity for a gag like this was too good to miss. Harry was in his element fooling around and making everyone around him feel at ease. From that moment on I realized that the prince we had all written about was a far more natural and fun-loving young man than he was given the credit for.
If Harry has the chance to say or do something funny, he will. This spontaneity and ability to play the fool, even at his own expense, is a key reason why he has risen to become one of the most popular members of the Royal family in history.
I returned downstairs still laughing at what had happened. So much for me expecting to be shouted at for writing the Nazi story. It was clear he had no intention of bringing that up; he was just wanting to enjoy a night out before the boredom of posing for the cameras once again as a member of the Royal family.
Instead of returning to where I had been standing I decided to take my drink out to the foyer, where the protection officers still sat waiting for the signal the boys were ready to call it a night.
I sat down next to one of the offi
cers and we started chatting about rugby and anything other than our jobs. After a few minutes a young reveller appeared out of a side room wearing nothing but a pair of silk boxer shorts. The lad clearly knew the protection officers and in a bid to find somewhere to sit and talk to them he jumped onto my lap. One of the officers then couldn’t resist the temptation of having a bit of fun at this high-spirited reveller’s expense.
He said: ‘Hello, Guy, have you met The Sun’s new Royal correspondent, Duncan Larcombe?’
It was Guy Pelly, William and Harry’s best-known pal. He had taken the rap when Harry was accused of smoking a joint in Highgrove. Since then his wild antics had often made the headlines. The son of a self-made millionaire car dealer, Pelly had struck up a close friendship with William and Harry while they were at school together at Eton.
Without a second word, Pelly jumped off my lap and ran back into the adjoining room. The incident had clearly spooked him, much to the delight of the protection officers. They definitely enjoyed the look on Pelly’s face when he realized whose lap he was sitting on, wearing nothing more than his boxers.
To this day I don’t know whether it was the incident with Guy Pelly which prompted William to break with Royal protocol. Bizarre as some of the things I had witnessed in less than an hour of being in that club were, nothing could have prepared me for what was to happen next.
A few minutes later I was still chatting to the protection officers when William himself came into the foyer. This was the first time I’d met the future king and I was surprised that he seemed keen to speak to me.
‘What is the story in tomorrow’s papers then?’ he asked.
I explained that most of the papers were running pictures of him on the slopes with his girlfriend Kate Middleton. They had been taken earlier that day and with the couple looking so in love the story was bound to be splashed all over the papers.
William seemed strangely surprised by this and asked what all the fuss was about. Surely he knew the level of interest in his first serious relationship, I thought.
Kate, whom he had met at university and had been secretly dating for more than eighteen months, ticked all the right boxes. She was stunning, and came from a wealthy family but not the usual aristocratic background. Their relationship was a real love story about a young, handsome prince who had met and fallen in love with a ‘commoner’. Kate had already been briefed on how to act in front of the cameras. Every time a photographer went near her she smiled and kept her mouth shut.
I asked him if he had heard the rumours that Kate was the one. His father was due to marry his true love in just a few days’ time, so it was inevitable that people would be drawing comparisons between Kate and Camilla Parker Bowles. This was dodgy ground for William and I felt bad putting him on the spot. But he gave me an answer that oddly enough became more of a prophecy when we look back now.
He replied: ‘I’m only twenty-two for God’s sake. I don’t want to get married until I’m twenty-eight or maybe thirty.’
I couldn’t have imagined back then that six years later I would be sitting in Westminster Abbey watching Kate walk down the aisle while two billion people sat in front of their TV sets to see her and William tie the knot. It still makes me wonder whether William already knew that Kate really was the one and that as soon as he felt they were old enough they would get married.
Even more than his brother Harry, William’s life is destined to follow a fairly rigid script. As the heir to the throne he carries the weight of expectation and is only too aware that his life is, in many respects, not his own.
But the main, and most touching part of our conversation that night, was about his kid brother. Since embarking on his gap year, Harry had been the subject of a great deal of criticism. When the Nazi story broke, people were saying he was out of control, a dangerous loose cannon whose antics risked damaging the monarchy. Now William leapt to Harry’s defence, insisting the way his brother was being portrayed in the media was nothing like the real person he knew and loved. ‘He’s just a kid who’s madly in love,’ he said.
The way William defended Harry that night was very special. It was clear the two brothers were so close. They really cared about each other and William was visibly upset that Harry had endured such criticism.
Once again his words would turn out to be prophetic. Over the coming few years Harry’s true colours would shine through. Yes, he would always be known as a party-loving prince but the fun-loving, caring and genuine side to the young Royal would take him from that point to becoming one of the most popular Royals. The more the public saw of Harry, the more they would come to adore him. His natural way with people and ability to come across well in front of the cameras were gifts that back then had yet to be unwrapped.
William’s words also confirmed that Chelsy and Harry were head over heels in love with each other. She was not a holiday fling or someone Harry was enjoying time with before he knuckled down to military life. Chelsy clearly held a very special place in Harry’s heart, and William had been listening to his brother rave about her for months. We talked for more than half an hour and William came across as a confident, friendly and trustworthy young man.
Since the tragic death of his mother, William had withdrawn into the background. He had been kept away from the cameras and allowed to finish his studies in relative peace. In that time he had met and fallen in love with Kate and his relationship with Harry had grown closer than ever. The shy, slightly awkward-looking young prince had grown up. He was confident in himself and clearly concerned for his brother.
The following day, when the press pack finally got the photocall they had been waiting for, William and Harry famously showed just how good an asset they were to become for the Royal family. They arrived at the agreed point with the media scrum carefully positioned behind a rope a good twenty metres away. A very grumpy-looking Prince Charles arrived, flanked by his sons. His expression of unease was a possible clue as to what was about to happen.
As the three princes sat on a wooden wall while the camera shutters clicked away, the BBC’s Royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell shouted out the first question. He asked Prince Charles about his upcoming nuptials, a reasonable enough question given that the wedding to Camilla was to take place the following week.
Without realizing microphones would pick up his every word, Prince Charles turned to his sons and muttered quietly: ‘These bloody people. I hate doing this.’ Then, in a now infamous reference to the veteran BBC reporter, he said: ‘I can’t bear that man. I mean he’s so awful, he really is.’
Astonishingly, it was William and Harry who tried to calm their father down. William did his best to help his father through the briefing. At one stage, after a pressman urged the trio to ‘look like you know each other’, the two princes leaned into their father, who put his arms around them.
Charles then muttered under his breath: ‘What do we do?’
William replied: ‘Keep smiling, keep smiling.’
It was a cringeworthy display from Prince Charles, especially considering how many times in his life he had been expected to get through such photocalls.
As I stood in the press pen looking on, I began to wonder what kind of a night on the tiles Prince Charles must have had, to perform so badly. Harry, who I’d last seen slumped over the bar in the early hours of that morning, looked fresh-faced and relaxed. William, who had not exactly enjoyed an early night either, managed to hold the photoshoot together while his father seemed intent on messing it up.
When the TV crews finally got to edit their recordings of the encounter they couldn’t believe what their small microphones placed in the snow by the princes’ feet had picked up. Within minutes Prince Charles’s on-screen rant was being beamed back to London. A gaffe which made him look grumpy and unprofessional. The danger with attacking the media so publicly is that they are only there as representatives of the general public.
Who wouldn’t expect Prince Charles to answer a reasonable question abo
ut his upcoming wedding? And how on earth did it fall to his two young sons to placate their father and prevent even more embarrassment?
It is no surprise that this photocall was the last of its kind. The following year Clarence House announced that the Prince of Wales would no longer take his annual ski trip to Klosters. While William and Kate have returned since, for his father that photocall was perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back.
For the Royal press pack the trip to Switzerland that year was one of the most revealing moments in years. We now knew that William was to emerge from university a mature and confident young Royal. His contrasting behaviour in front of the cameras was a sign of how there really would be a danger he might one day eclipse his father in public. And thanks to William’s brotherly intervention, we now knew that perhaps there was more to Harry than had met the eye.
The young prince playing pranks and making jokes on a night out in Klosters was not the person I had read about for the past few months. He wasn’t out of control, he was Harry. Yes, he may have lost his temper with the photographer a few months earlier, and yes, he may have made a stupid mistake by dressing as a Nazi at a party, but there was clearly much more to Harry than this. He was in love, and his readiness to fly all over the world just to spend a few hours with Chelsy showed his passionate, almost free-spirited side. At twenty years old why shouldn’t he spend as much time with Chelsy as possible? He was just weeks away from starting at Sandhurst in May, and once that ordeal got underway he was unlikely to spend any time with the girl who he clearly found captivating.
I later discovered that Harry had secretly flown Chelsy from Cape Town to England for Valentine’s Day the previous month. While this romantic gesture went down well, Chelsy’s visit had more significance. It was on this occasion that she met Prince Charles and was introduced to Kate Middleton. Harry had already ticked the Davy family boxes in Mozambique; now Chelsy had gained the Royal seal of approval.
Prince Harry Page 6