In a pair of skin-tight yellow hotpants and a matching bra, Mariella Butkute sidled over to Harry’s table and jumped onto his lap. The unsuspecting prince began to blush and seemed to physically freeze as the glamorous Lithuanian began to whisper in his ear. What could Harry do? If he pushed her off she would almost certainly go to a newspaper and sell her story. And if he let her sit on his lap she would almost certainly go to a newspaper and sell her story. The fact was, it was already too late for Harry. It must have dawned on him by this point that simply by stepping into Spearmint Rhino that night he was walking onto the front pages of all the tabloid papers.
The next morning my phone rang. I was at home working on a feature about Harry passing out of Sandhurst when a voice I recognized came on the line.
‘Hi Duncan, it’s Merts here, you are not going to believe this one.’ It was David Mertens, the longest-serving member of the newsdesk, whose appetite for a good story had remained unaffected by the years he had been taking calls from readers. ‘We’ve just had a call to say that Prince Harry went to Spearmint Rhino last night,’ he said. ‘We think he may have even paid for a private dance.’
I could tell by the tone of David’s voice that he was convinced the tip had some truth to it. All too often this kind of ‘too-good-to-be-true’ tip turns out to be a hoax. But I remember thinking surely this is a mistake. Harry wouldn’t be that foolish, and anyway he must be busy preparing for the passing out parade. My instincts were wrong – my colleague’s were not.
By the time I had phoned the palace to double-check the story, one of my colleagues had already been to the club, spoken to staff and stood the story up. Nor did I have to waste much time telling Prince Charles’s director of communications why I was calling. Paddy Harverson had been expecting my call. He had already been asked to check out the tip for three other papers. The palace press office had no choice but to confirm the story, and although they declined to make any comment on Harry’s behalf, they didn’t warn us away from running a story.
Within minutes of the first editions of the next day’s papers dropping that night, the ‘sordid details’ of Harry’s ‘night of shame’ were being picked up by TV and radio stations across the world. Once again, Harry’s reputation as a party-loving prince with an eye for the ladies was being cemented by commentators and ‘experts’ everywhere. Some people said he was stupid, others claimed Harry’s actions were ‘outrageous’ and ‘sexist’. Most were quick to point out the fact that by setting foot in Spearmint Rhino, Harry had become the first member of the Royal family to have ever visited a lap dancing bar.
Waves of criticism always follow Harry gaffes and this was no exception. It was claimed the following day that his antics had ‘enraged’ senior officers at Sandhurst who were preparing to welcome the Queen to the passing out parade. Harry and his co-accused were said to have been given a dressing down during an ‘interview without coffee’.
However, the truth of what actually happened that night was a world away from how commentators were interpreting Harry’s behaviour. When Mariella the dancer was interviewed about her famous customer she put a very different spin on what actually happened. Far from the young prince ‘ogling’ women and drinking heavily with his chums, she revealed that Harry had looked like a fish out of water.
She said: ‘I couldn’t believe I was sitting on a prince’s lap. But he was the perfect gentleman He was definitely the most polite and well-spoken client I have ever had.’ And despite her best efforts to lure Harry into paying for a private dance, he had flatly refused to enter into the spirit of the evening.
Mariella added: ‘When I saw him I didn’t know who he was, but one of the other girls said it was Prince Harry. I went straight over to him and kissed him on both cheeks. I asked him if he wanted a dance but he said he didn’t because he had a girlfriend who he was really in love with. Harry said, “She’s really beautiful. I wouldn’t want to have a dance because that would be like cheating on her.”’
Even when Mariella told him that Chelsy probably wouldn’t care, Harry stuck to his guns. ‘He was happy to talk away. He’s a really handsome boy and was really nice to talk to. Soon after we started chatting he asked me why I was working there. He said, “Why don’t you try to get a better job?” I told him I liked the club and earned a good living. I thought he was a really special person.’
Mariella said the prince talked a lot about his time at Sandhurst. ‘He told me he was enjoying it but said he missed his girlfriend a lot. He told me the worst thing about being a prince was that he can’t go anywhere without people looking at him. I told him, “Well that’s how it goes, darling.”’
Mariella’s account demonstrates that Harry’s decision to go to the club, while foolish, was motivated by curiosity rather than a desire to see naked women. He did little more than tag along with a few of his friends to experience what it must be like to be normal.
Harry may have been rightly criticized for entering a strip club, but he can’t be accused of anything more than a minor error of judgement. In the grand scheme of things, the night in the lap dancing bar was an innocuous event. But there is no doubt it has, over the years, contributed to his hell-raising, partying reputation. Perhaps that is a little unfair on someone who sipped just a single beer, refused any private dance, and ended up questioning why someone would choose to earn a living by taking off their clothes for money.
Once again an otherwise unblemished year, in this case a year of knuckling down and training to become an officer, was overshadowed by a single event.
By the time Harry completed his training, there is little doubt he had changed. The experience of Sandhurst played a fundamental role in shaping the person Harry has become. He had started at the academy as an angry, naive and even immature young man. By the time he marched with his colleagues in front of the Old College at Sandhurst, and beamed with pride as his grandmother inspected his platoon during the passing out parade, he was a confident and self-assured junior officer in the British Army.
In 2016 Harry reflected on the impact Sandhurst had on his life when he was on a visit to a group of volunteer mentors. He told them: ‘I was at a stage in my life when I was probably lacking a bit in guidance. I lost my mum when I was very young and suddenly I was surrounded by a huge number of men in the Army.’
Reflecting on the instructor who had mocked him on his very first day at the Academy, Harry added: ‘He was someone who teased me at the right moments and gave me the confidence to look forward, to actually have that confidence in yourself to know who you are and to push forward and try to help others.’
CHAPTER 16
THE WARRIOR PRINCE
‘If the insurgents can get through two hundred Gurkhas to reach him [Prince Harry], then they’ve earned the right to cut his head off,’ growled the colonel.
It had long been rumoured that when the soldier prince made it to the front line he would be joined there by an elite team of Special Forces, who would protect him from the enemy. But with these words the unnamed officer put pay to that suggestion once and for all.
Speaking as the press were briefed ahead of Harry’s secret deployment to Afghanistan, the colonel revealed that he would be treated just like any member of the Armed Forces serving their country in the war zone. There was to be no sugar coating, Harry would lead men on the front line and execute the role he had been trained for. He would go there to do a job and that was that.
The deployment was to be the best-known secret in Fleet Street history. Every national media outlet in the UK would be told that Harry was off to war, and in return they would agree not to publish or broadcast the story until he was out of harm’s way.
It was a compromise that sat uncomfortably with many, particularly some of the more left-leaning members of Her Majesty’s media. But it was, in reality, the only way the prince would be able to serve his country without the lives of other soldiers being put at a greater risk.
It was agreed that if the Taliban fighters k
new the third in line to the British throne was among the 9,000 British troops in Afghanistan then there was every chance they would step up their attacks. Even if they had no idea what Harry looked like, or where exactly he was serving, the risk of other troops being killed because the prince was out there was deemed too great.
Even those journalists who didn’t like being asked to go along with the blackout were forced to accept the deal. If they blinked first, if it was their paper or show that revealed Harry was at war, they would face a huge backlash from their peers. They would risk being blamed for ruining Harry’s chance of fighting or, worse, could even be seen as fuelling insurgent attacks on British troops.
It was an unprecedented agreement and one that is unlikely to ever be repeated. But remarkably the deal seemed to be working. Harry would head to Afghanistan in December 2007, and the British media would keep quiet – at least for now. In return for their cooperating, the palace and the Ministry of Defence would facilitate a series of embargoed reports from the front line that could be written and broadcast as and when news of his deployment was made public.
Sitting in the makeshift departure lounge at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, Harry had mixed feelings. This is what he had longed for. A chance to serve his country and to see action in the front line as a genuine soldier. The Royals have a very special place in the hearts of the Armed Forces. Barely a mess dinner goes by without the customary toast to the Queen. Each member of the family is colonel in chief of a series of regiments, and no one who has ever served in the forces is likely to have missed out on a chance to meet at least one member of the Royal family.
But Harry’s task would set him apart from his family in a way that he had dreamed of as a little boy. He never wanted his fascination with the forces to stop at the ceremonial role mapped out for him. He wanted to be the Army, to serve alongside his men and earn his reputation as a good officer first and a popular member of the Royal family second.
The wait at Brize, sitting with his feet perched on his large kitbag, must have seemed like days rather than hours. The flight he would catch would be the same as everyone around him. After six hours there would be a refuelling stop in Cyprus, then it was straight to Kandahar airport in Afghanistan. From there he would climb aboard a Hercules troop carrier which, under the cover of darkness, would take Harry and his fellow troops to Camp Bastion, the British and American base in the heart of war-torn Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan.
As the plane started its descent, the signal went up for everyone on board to put on their body armour and helmets. This was it, thought Harry. This was the moment he had dreamed of since being a little boy and meeting soldiers during Royal visits as a child. All the blisters, sleepless nights and pressure of Sandhurst, all the pre-deployment training and the disappointment of missing out on his tour of Iraq – it had all been for this moment.
Like a footballer who had waited most of his life to finally pull on the kit for real and run onto the pitch, Harry felt this was what he had been preparing for, this was his destiny. The Taliban insurgents had little ground-to-air capability. But when the Hercules was low enough to make its landing into the vast air base in the middle of the Afghan desert, all those on board became sitting targets for rocket-propelled grenade attacks from the ground. For the first time in his life, Harry felt the real surge of adrenalin that only comes when you know there are people below who want you dead.
As any soldier does when arriving in a conflict zone for the first time, Harry felt a mix of excitement and fear as the plane approached the runway. He had been told his job was to serve on the front line as a forward air controller, a role that would bring him up close to the enemy. He would serve in a Forward Operating Base (FOB), a makeshift mud-walled compound in the heart of Helmand Province. There would be no luxuries while he was there. The FOBs were basic, to say the least. He would live off military ration packs and any other local supplies his men could find. It would be his task to man a radio, calling in air strikes on insurgent targets on the ground within a few hundred metres of where he was based.
When speaking over the airwaves he would no longer be Prince Harry. Instead he would be known as Widow Six Seven, a suitably warlike call sign that had already got Harry’s heart racing. At just twenty-three and a junior officer in the Household Cavalry, this tour of duty would test the prince to the limit. And it would not be without its dangers. As their names suggest, the FOBs are outposts from where the allied troops took the battle to the enemy. Every day troops would leave the FOB to carry out foot patrols through the dusty and deserted tracks nearby. These essential missions were aimed at reassuring local Afghans and ensuring a signal was sent to the militant insurgents – the British troops were here to force you out.
In late 2007, when Harry set foot in Afghanistan for the first time, British forces were desperately overstretched because the war in Iraq was still in full swing. Only a year or so earlier the Taliban fighters, who had been resisting allied advances in their country since 2001, had begun to use a far more terrifying weapon. Outgunned and outnumbered, they had started using a new way of striking fear into the hearts of their enemy. Rather than risk engaging British troops in gun battles, they were increasingly using home-made bombs and booby traps to injure and kill.
These so-called Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) had already claimed the lives of dozens of British troops in the months leading up to Harry’s deployment. In many cases the insurgents would use anti-tank mines left over from the bitter war with Russia to wreak havoc on British convoys, and the roadside bombs now posed an increasing threat.
No matter how well he was trained, Harry – like all soldiers fighting in Afghanistan – knew that the greatest threat came the second they stepped out of the FOBs. Each and every footstep could trigger a deadly explosion and the enemy would be way out of sight.
Less than twenty-four hours after he arrived at Camp Bastion, Harry was flown to the FOB he was to call home, a tiny base on the edge of Garmsir, then the southernmost corner of NATO control in Helmand. Harry joined a handful of Gurkhas manning the base which overlooked an area of ‘no man’s land’ intended to form a buffer zone from where enemy attacks and ambushes could not be launched. Anyone spotted wandering into this area was deemed a threat and the soldiers took turns keeping ‘stag’, Army slang for lookout.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, the British media kept their side of the bargain. In the first few days, as Harry adjusted to life in his new makeshift quarters, his entry into Afghanistan had been kept secret.
On Christmas Day, when the Royal family took part in their traditional visit to St Mary Magdalene Church on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, the crowds of Royal well-wishers watching the family go past had no idea why Prince Harry was missing from their number.
Ever since he was born, Harry and his brother William had spent Christmas at Sandringham with their grandmother and the rest of the Royal family. It was a tradition which for many Brits was as much a part of Christmas as Brussels sprouts, opening presents and watching great-uncle Keith fall asleep in the armchair after his third glass of brandy.
But if the hundreds of Royal fanatics had failed to realize Harry was missing from that year’s gathering, the empty chair at the Royals’ Christmas lunch did not go without comment. Before they ate, the Queen said a prayer for her grandson and for his safe return from Afghanistan. Her family’s concerns were shared by the families of thousands of British servicemen and women who would spend the festive season miles away from their loved ones while serving in the front line.
Strangely, however, Harry was in his element that day. The sense of release he felt at being able to spend Christmas without the tradition and duty was overwhelming. While of course he missed his family, and his girlfriend Chelsy, he had now found a new group of friends with whom he could toast the most important day on the Christian calendar.
Instead of dining at Sandringham, Harry joined a group of Gurkhas he had befriended in his new environm
ent. One of the soldiers had been able to buy a goat from a local farmer and the plan was to make a tasty Nepalese curry over an open fire. A source who shared the feast with Harry that year revealed: ‘It was bitterly cold, but everyone was in high spirits. One of the Gurkhas had somehow managed to get hold of a goat and the thought of having a day off eating from the rat [ration] packs filled everyone with joy.
‘Prince Harry was fascinated by the Gurkhas. He had quickly made friends with them and was on first name terms with just about all of them. On Christmas morning they slaughtered the animal as Harry looked on. Even though we were in the middle of a war zone, no one really cared. It was a very special day and the curry was the best scran any of us had eaten since leaving home.
‘Harry seemed to love the fact it was laid-back and totally different. It must have been the first time he’d ever been able to enjoy a Christmas without having to take part in the usual traditional surroundings of Sandringham. He spent hours chatting to the Gurkhas, asking them to tell him stories, and seemed genuinely fascinated by what they had to say.
‘A lot of people struggle on Christmas Day, missing their families and wishing they were at home. But Harry seemed to be enjoying being out there more than anyone else. He made jokes and played the fool, which lifted everyone’s spirits.’
Life on the front line was tough but clearly something the young prince was enjoying.
Apart from the men who served alongside Harry, very few people had any idea what life was really like for him as he realized his dream of seeing combat. The only insight came from the one print journalist who was tasked with making two separate visits to the front line while Harry was there, a Northern Irishman called John Bingham.
Prince Harry Page 21