The media had shown no interest previously in reporting on a country most people had never even heard of, but they would fill their pages and bulletins with the plight of the forgotten children of Lesotho if Prince Harry was there.
Harry would have known how the Royals use their status to draw attention to good causes. His mother was the master of drawing attention to the needs of others by agreeing to be pictured and filmed on location. But when Harry spoke about his experiences in Lesotho that year, it was clear even he had been surprised by what could be achieved if he agreed to be used by the media.
In his documentary interview Harry recalled how within hours of posing for the cameras at an orphanage in Lesotho, good things began to happen. He revealed how the day after the photocall a South African farmer drove over the border to find the prince and offer his help. ‘He pitched up and wanted to talk to me. So I spoke to him and he just basically said to me that the night before “I went home, turned on my television and there I saw a member of the British Royal family, and not just that, a 19-year-old who has come all the way over from England to Lesotho to make everybody aware of the problems.”
‘I mean there are all sorts of ways of getting around problems like this but I’m here merely to bring awareness to the problems. And he [the farmer] said he couldn’t believe it took that much from someone from another Royal family thousands of miles away to come over just to do that when basically he was appalled and shocked by himself, the fact that Lesotho is on their back doorstep and they’ve got the means to help and they don’t. He thanked us, and he said thank you for opening our eyes.’
Without realizing it, that unnamed farmer who tracked Harry down to offer help had inadvertently opened his to what his future might hold. Until that day Harry was an angry, slightly naive teenager with an understandable chip on his shoulder the size of one of his grandmother’s palaces. But Lesotho offered him a purpose, a possible future where he could use his status for good.
He also gave a hint as to why in later life Harry would choose young people in particular as a focus for his Royal work. He said: ‘I love children but that’s probably because I’ve got an incredibly immature side to me. I love children back home but up here there’s hundreds of children everywhere. There are 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds looking after cattle.
‘The nicest thing out here is they don’t know who I am. I’m just a normal guy to them, which is really, really nice. It’s so special just to be one of them. OK, I’m very different, I’ve had a completely different growing up to them, but it’s a case of being like them, having a laugh with them. You should see their faces. I’ve got my video camera, I’ve taken lots of pictures and they are all so happy.’
The trip he made at the young age of nineteen was to have such a profound effect on Harry that he spoke candidly about his mother’s legacy and in so doing revealed for the first time what really makes him tick.
Asked whether he thought about his mother when he spent time with the children, he replied: ‘Definitely. I’ve always wanted to do this. It is what she was doing. I’m only nineteen but there is a lot of me that wants to say, “OK, let’s keep my mother’s legacy going.” But at the age of nineteen it’s pretty hard work. I try and be as normal as I can, to try and have a normal life before it gets too hectic.
‘She never came to Lesotho but she’s worked around the same areas and I believe I’ve got a lot of my mother in me. And I just think she’d want us to do this, me and my brother. Obviously it’s not as easy for William as it is for me. I think I’ve got more time on my hands to be able to help. We have both got our lives set out for us, but I think he’s got his life really set out.
‘Unfortunately it’s been a long time now – not for me but for most people – a long time since she died. But it’s just a shame that after all the good she’s done, even this far on, people aren’t bringing out the good in her. There’s people who want to bring out the bad stuff because bad news sells. I’m not out here to try and change that, but I’m out here doing what I want to do and doing what she’d want me to do.’
Harry’s words in that interview gave one of the best insights into how he thinks and where he sees himself as a Royal. He may have been speaking as a young man, but even today his words have a striking relevance. By using his Royal status to draw attention to issues close to his heart, he is continuing his mother’s legacy.
He went on to sum up what it was like to be Prince Harry and looking back all these years later, his words read like a manifesto for his future life. ‘I’m not normal,’ he said. ‘Much as I’d like to be normal, I’m not normal and my father reminds me of that the whole time. William and I can’t be normal, but we grew up in the year 2000. We are part of the Royal family, but we’ve grown up surrounded by all our friends, it’s completely different to what other generations have been like. I’ve tried, we’ve both tried to be as normal as we can. I think the British media and all sorts of other media try to focus on the fact that I am a playboy, I am a party prince, all that sort of stuff, which I’m not.
‘I’m a teenager who goes out and has fun and no matter what time I come out of a club, they’re going to write that it was four o’clock in the morning, there’s nothing I can do about that. And recently in the papers after the press call the quote was “Nice try, Harry, but are you really converted?”
‘But I’m not converted, I’ve always been like this, this is my side that no one gets to see. I’m not going to take a camera crew with me every time I go out and am trying to help out in different countries. I am who I am, and though I believe I’m no one special, I can do things like for instance the press. There I was at the orphanage and the fact that all the press came meant that we got £2,000, which meant that we paid for the whole fence, which was perfect because it meant that all the children were safe inside the orphanage.’
Asked to describe how he deals with the pressure of being in the constant media spotlight and whether he just lets it wash over him, he replied: ‘Time after time it upsets me, but nobody will understand that other than my brother and myself. He and I are very close obviously because of our mother. But we both get the same kind of hassle, different times, different things, you know. It’s hard. We’ve got friends of ours and we’ve got the British public saying “Good on them they’re being normal”, and then you’ve got the British media saying “Oh, but they can’t be normal”, or “This isn’t normal, it’s completely outrageous”, that sort of thing.
‘I’d love to let it wash over me but unfortunately I can’t, I don’t think anyone can. It’s hard but I’m not out here for a sympathy vote. I’m not going to answer that question as a sympathy vote, I’m going to answer it completely honestly and say that William and I try to be normal, it’s very difficult, but we are who we are.
‘I’m coming to the age now where I can make the most of that. When I was young I was like, “Oh, I can’t believe I’ve got to do this, got to do that.” Ever since our mother died, everyone recognizes us around streets, you know, it’s all a bit awkward, but as I get older I can use it like my mother did. She was just a normal woman who married my father and became this Queen of Hearts simply because she used her position basically and used her position in a good way, and that’s what I want to do.’
It was on this trip that Harry made a famous pledge to highlight the plight of the children, one which he is still honouring with the passion that was sparked by his teenage experiences in Lesotho.
Shortly after returning from that visit Harry set about forming his charity Sentebale. Fittingly, its name means ‘Forget Me Not’ and in the years since his gap-year visit the charity has raised millions of pounds to help those whose plight Harry witnessed back in 2004. Two years later the fledgling charity was up and running after Harry teamed up with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho. Gala dinners, pop concerts and posh polo matches all over the world have helped the prince raise funds for Lesotho. Probably none of this would have happened had he not agreed to visit the kingdom
in 2004.
While the charity has had many teething problems, it stands as a testament to the lifelong commitment Harry made as he returned home from Lesotho. The prince repeated his pledge in 2014, ten years after his first, life-changing visit to the tiny kingdom.
In an interview during a star-studded fundraising polo match in Abu Dhabi, Harry spoke about the setting up of Sentebale. ‘It started really, really small … a very small group of us saying we’re not going to use the funds for other people, it’s going to be all for the kids and pretending we knew what we were doing. Ten years down the line we have made a couple of mistakes and in turn learned from our mistakes and now we know that actually, by speaking to the core problem, which in this case is the children themselves, you get a really good taste of whether you’re achieving it or not. The great thing about Lesotho is that because it’s so small, you know that if you’re doing it wrong, it’s highly visible. And if you’re doing it right you start to see the change.’
He went on to admit his charity was a ‘hard sell for a lot of people’, but committed to continue the work, adding: ‘It’s a very small country that no one knows about, surrounded by South Africa, a landlocked country, and I think that combined with us thinking that we were doing right, it evolved and it changed for the better. We realized our mistakes and we were willing to change it by speaking to the kids on the ground.
‘What I’d like to think is that Sentebale has brought everyone together to work for one great cause. It’s been an emotional roller-coaster but we’ve come out on top and all I’ve ever wanted to do was raise enough money to make a difference for Lesotho.’
Harry has returned there many times and although he is now much older and more mature than on that first occasion, his feelings towards the people of Lesotho remain exactly the same. It was no surprise therefore that when Harry’s tour of Afghanistan was cut short in 2008, he filled much of his time planning a trip to Lesotho with his men.
In July 2008 Harry’s commanders with the Blues and Royals regiment agreed for him to take twenty of his men to Lesotho to help rebuild a school for disabled children as well as help with other projects supported by Sentebale. During the visit the media were invited to see the work they were doing and find out more about the charity’s progress. There was nothing unusual about the invitation and most of the British papers and TV channels made the twelve-hour flight to South Africa and then the one-hour drive across the border into Lesotho. But this was not going to be an ordinary Royal photocall.
All senior Royals make foreign visits, carefully orchestrated to ensure the media get their slice of the cherry, while attention is drawn to the worthy causes in the spotlight. Touring with Prince Charles normally means visits to sustainable projects, rainforests or programmes to promote the built environment. The outspoken future king is often good value as he draws attention to the causes close to his heart. On these trips you rarely get any direct access to the Prince of Wales and are left to settle for photo opportunities and the occasional heartfelt speech.
But Harry being Harry, he was determined to put his own stamp on this visit. The night before the photocall at the school he had been helping rebuild, Harry’s media team had arranged for the customary ‘briefing’ in a conference room of one of the few hotels in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru. Usually these briefings are with the familiar faces of the palace press office and members of the organization in question. But as the door opened and we filed into the conference room that evening, to everyone’s surprise the door was being held open for us by Harry himself. None of us were expecting him to be there in person, and after a long journey we thought we would simply be going through the usual planning session with the palace. Even some of the more seasoned Royal journalists were taken aback to be greeted at the door by Harry. It turned out that he had travelled more than an hour from where he was staying to greet us.
It was the first time I had seen Harry since our long chat in the beer garden of the pub on the Isle of Wight. He was in good spirits, laughing and joking with the media men he recognized and shaking hands with members of the local media, who were wide-eyed with delight.
Harry’s ability to charm and put people at ease is a sight to behold. And because we had all been caught off guard by him being at the briefing everyone knuckled down to the matter in hand, taking more notes than usual and trying to out-do each other with clever questions about the following day’s events.
After about forty minutes the briefing was over and we were all looking forward to getting some sleep ready for what was clearly going to be a long day ahead. But as we left the conference room Harry came over to us and said: ‘Anyone fancy a beer?’
It was unheard-of for a Royal to join in a media briefing, let alone invite us upstairs to the hotel bar afterwards for a drink. Harry was very relaxed as he spoke to journalists and filled them in on the Sentebale projects he had been working with.
It was not long after his cousin Peter had married the Canadian Autumn Kelly. The couple had broken with Royal protocall and agreed to let their wedding be photographed and feature in a special edition of the celebrity magazine Hello! I asked Harry how the wedding had gone and about how he felt about the pages and pages of coverage it had attracted as part of the magazine deal.
Standing at the bar Harry recalled how one thing about the wedding reception had really stuck in his mind. He said: ‘Someone had the bright idea to have a mirrored dance floor at the reception, can you imagine how crazy that was?’
After thinking through what he was saying the penny finally dropped. Anyone dancing at his cousin’s wedding would be reflected by the dance floor.
I laughed and asked Harry: ‘Oh dear, I bet you were worried about Chelsy dancing and everyone being able to see up her skirt?’
He quickly replied: ‘Never mind Chelsy, it was my grandmother I was worried about.’
It was a hilarious exchange. Here was Harry joking about the Queen dancing on top of a mirror, and needless to say we all fell about laughing at what he had said.
This was typical Harry. Putting everyone at ease by making light of what could have been a most memorable family gaffe. This was Harry at his best, holding forth, pint in hand, and it would have been easy to forget he was a senior member of the Royal family, rather than just a guy who’d been to a family wedding and saw the funny side in what could – but thankfully didn’t – happen.
He was in Lesotho for a serious reason, trying to keep public attention on a cause so close to his heart. But rather than fall into the trap of being aloof and too serious, he knew that by relaxing and putting people at ease he was far more likely to get the kind of coverage he was after. It was a refreshing experience for everyone there that night and made us all the more determined to ensure Sentebale got great coverage once the photocall had taken place.
As part of the media visit Harry had arranged for his men to take on the gentlemen of the press with a game of football. Following the photocall of Harry and his men pushing wheelbarrows of earth and working up a sweat as they repaired the small school, we were all invited to pull on a football shirt and have a kickabout on a nearby dusty pitch.
The only shirt that I had offered to me was far too small, and to the delight of Harry I looked terrible as I puffed about the pitch in the scorching heat. I’ve always loved football but never had the coordination or skill to play. So the sight of me running about chasing shadows as Harry and his team took us to the cleaners delighted the young Royal. As I ran to keep up, Harry started making hippo noises at my expense. This was a chance for him to humiliate me in front of the other members of the press pack and he was enjoying every minute.
At one point, as my frustrations continued, I tried to tackle Harry. But his soccer skills being so much better than my own, he spun around and expertly kicked the ball away before I’d got close. Then, in full view of the cameras, Harry faced me and put his hand up to his forehead before making an L-shape with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Loser!’ he shouted before
running off. Once again Harry was playing the fool, but doing so at my expense. The photographers and cameramen along the side-line were laughing and started heckling me as I puffed about the pitch.
It was great fun, even if the joke was well and truly at my expense. But once again Harry knew exactly what he was doing. He was performing for the cameras, making sure that when the day’s events were written up we all had lots to fill our pages for the following day’s paper.
The ribbing I had taken only got worse when I phoned the office to tell them what had happened. ‘Tell me you’ve got pictures,’ demanded the very excited-sounding picture editor. Unfortunately for me, there were several pictures of Harry flicking the loser sign in my direction, and by now I was being ribbed by my colleagues six thousand miles away. The following day the picture of me and Harry filled a whole page, which simply meant the ribbing now also came from friends who had spotted the paper.
With my phone in meltdown with text messages adding to my humiliation, we were waiting for Harry to arrive at an orphanage for the final part of his photocall visit. When his car pulled up Harry gleefully jumped out and shouted in my direction: ‘Have you seen your picture in the paper today – you look so stupid!’
He had clearly taken great delight in getting a bit of payback at my expense. But in so doing had ensured great coverage for Sentebale in the UK’s biggest paper. For Harry it was mission accomplished and served yet again as a masterclass in how to use the press to his advantage.
It was very clear from that short visit in July 2008 that Harry’s desire to do everything he could to help the children of Lesotho was stronger than ever. A pledge he made during the TV interview as a fresh-faced 19-year-old was being delivered in style. This was a prince on a mission to make sure the plight of those he had met during his gap-year visit was not going to be ignored.
Whatever people may say about Harry’s antics, it is impossible to find fault with his determination to continue his mother’s legacy. It is hard to think of any other member of his family who would be able to lark about in front of the cameras without making themselves look awkward. It was by no means the last time Harry would play the fool as he tried to get a far more serious point across. But his ability to do this with such sincerity and his natural sense of good fun may explain why he is the darling of the Royal family in so many people’s eyes.
Prince Harry Page 14