Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (14 page)

There is a piece of received wisdom in my line of work which, in effect, states that to ensure effective protection, information is essential. If I was to find out what the paparazzi were doing, I needed to secure allies from Fleet Street. The professionals tended to be more reasonable because, unlike the freelance photographers, their pay checks were assured whether they got the pictures of Diana or not (unless they got fired for failing, of course). They wanted the scoop for reasons of professional pride as much as from a desire to beat the competition; in other words, they were not motivated by money alone.

With this in mind I climbed into a small boat with Dave Sharp and sailed out to where most of the press boats were. I spotted James Whitaker’s rotund frame and pulled up alongside. As I looked out at the gathered photographers and reporters with their sun-reddened faces and ample bellies, binoculars slung round their necks, I could not help smiling. They reminded me of
Sun
reporter Harry Arnold’s apt description of the royal ratpack when he had told Prince Charles, ‘We may be scum, sir, but we are
la crème de la
scum.’

We sailed in among them, and by a mixture of yells and gestures I signalled that I wanted them to meet me at Biras Creek on Virgin Gorda, about fifteen minutes away by motor boat. Sensing a deal, Whitaker, who always tended to assume the mantle of commander-in-chief of the ratpack, gave the order for the rest to follow.

Settled in a calypso bar, cocktails or beers distributed to everyone, we talked over and around the situation. I knew that I was in dangerous territory here. Technically, dealing with the press was well beyond my remit, and doing so could cause problems for me with my superior officers back at Scotland Yard. Yet in the end I felt I had no choice. I made it clear to the gaggle of hacks and photographers that the Princess was here on a
private
holiday and was under no obligation to give a photo opportunity just because the media happened to be intruding on her privacy. To sweeten the pill, I told them a few minor details about the holiday, without giving too much away. The senior journalists there – Whitaker, Kent Gavin and Arthur Edwards – sat quietly surrounded by the rest, listening to what I had to say. There was a moment’s silence after I delivered my ‘leave-us-alone’ speech, before James Whitaker delivered his response.

James’s bark was worse than his bite. The Red Tomato, as the Princess had dubbed him after seeing him packed tightly into a red ski-suit as he tried to give chase on a royal holiday in the Alps, adopted the mantle of spokesman-in-chief for the royal ratpack. With a manner somewhere between that of a retired colonel from the heyday of the British Raj and a female pantomime character played by a man in drag, he put the case for the indefensible. Mercifully, he spared me any ‘freedom-of-the-press-and-public-interest’ cant, adopting instead a more realistic approach.

‘Ken,’ he rasped portentously, ‘we have a bloody job to do, and if we work together we can make everybody’s job, including yours, a damned sight easier.’ I knew he had a point,
though I kept quiet. ‘If you could just persuade the Princess to go along with the idea of a photo call, she would get a peaceful holiday, you would not have to worry about security and we would have the editors off our backs, get the snaps and go fishing.’ Everyone, including Dave and I, burst out laughing but James silenced us with a glare.

He went on to point out that the newspaper journalists and photographers were the least of my problems, as the real concern was the foreign paparazzi. I knew that it was true. James continued by saying that if I could persuade the Princess to do one photo call, then he and the other senior Fleet Street journalists would do their best to broker a deal with the paparazzi. If the Princess wanted to have a reasonable holiday, a compromise with the media had to be made. The problem lay in selling it not only to the paparazzi, but to Diana as well.

Daily Mirror
photographer Kent Gavin, or ‘Idle Jack’, as he was known, ‘Widow Twankey’ Whitaker’s pantomime partner-in-crime, was the quiet one of the team. Unlike James, however, whose loud protestations usually went over people’s heads, when Gavin spoke he commanded respect from his peers. The Princess knew and liked him; indeed, he had even been invited to photograph Prince William’s christening in 1982 (and in 1996, the year before the Princess was killed, he was voted Royal Photographer of the Decade). He loved the good life and covering royal holidays, as well as official events, was an important part of his professional jet set life. For once, Gavin backed Whitaker, pressing home the point that the Fleet Street journalists were not really the problem. ‘Tell the Princess she looks a million dollars, and I’ll make sure the pictures of
her in the
Daily Mirror
do her justice. She’ll knock ’em dead back home.’ Kent Gavin understood that the real impact of the Princess upon the public was in pictures of her. He also knew she was vain, and that the idea of appearing on the front pages, showing off her beautiful and bronzed body, would secretly appeal to her.

For my part, I realised that the key to any deal depended on the Fleet Street journalists’ ability to deliver full co-operation from the paparazzi, men who, in the slipperiness stakes, made the most active eel look positively inert. Nevertheless, the Fleet Street teams did wield significant power over the paparazzi back then, since it was their editors who would pay the big cash for any pictures the freelancers got if they ignored a deal and struck out on their own. Additionally, the paparazzi were not stupid, and knew that it was better to secure a deal that got them some pictures, than risk getting absolutely nothing at all.

With some satisfaction, I noted that as Dave Sharp and I left the bar the royal ratpack were locked in discussions with their French, Italian and German rivals. ‘It puts the UN into perspective,’ I thought, as I glimpsed a red-faced Whitaker berating some unfortunate French photographer who had dared to challenge his authority.

On the journey back to Necker I mentally weighed up how I was going to win Diana’s support for a deal with the media. I knew I would need allies, notably Charles Spencer and Graham Smith, if I was to persuade her to co-operate. We may have found paradise, but I was well aware that if I failed to win the Princess over then, as far as she was concerned, mine would be a paradise lost.

Smudger supported me, as I had known he would; so too did Charles Spencer. He told the Princess that in his expert opinion we had no choice; we either negotiated a truce or it would be all-out war, and the local police simply did not have the resources to drive off fifty or sixty determined pressmen. Even with help from the guests, I and the two other protection officers would never be able to prevent some of our unwanted visitors from landing on the island and trying to get pictures of Diana and her sons; meanwhile, others out in the boats would come as far as they could inshore and snap her whenever she appeared. That was not intrusion, but full-scale invasion. As a clincher, Graham added his belief that if she did not agree, then we might have to decamp and either look for another holiday destination, at very short notice and with no guarantee that the media would not find us again within a day or so, or return to Britain. While the Princess was considering this, I explained that if we arranged one photo call there was a good chance that once they had got the pictures they had come for, the press would leave her and her family alone for the rest of the holiday.

‘But can you guarantee it, Ken?’ she said. This, of course, was the question I least wanted to have to answer, and the crux of the whole problem. I had to admit that I could not, but that there was very little alternative. Unlike in the previous year, the local police could not provide the additional cover we needed to cope with the numbers of journalists and photographers homing in on the island. They were busy chasing drug dealers, and had already withdrawn the night boat patrol they had originally offered. This, coupled with the fact that, the year before, I had dispensed with the services of
the local night-time beach patrol after I had found the police team asleep over their rifles, meant that my security team was stretched well beyond its capabilities. There was nothing we could do to stop the press invading Necker at any moment, day or night. True, their mission was to take photographs, and they were therefore not life-threatening, but it would still have been hugely embarrassing if any of them had made it up to the house. It would also have driven the Princess, and probably some of her guests, into a paroxysm of fury, with who knew what consequences. The last thing we wanted was a PR disaster brought on by complaints from aggrieved journalists or photographers. As it was, William and Harry were muttering darkly about exacting revenge on the intruders.

I explained to Diana that while I appreciated that she was on a private holiday and that she was entirely justified in complaining that her privacy was being shamefully invaded, we had to agree to the picture deal. I assured her that I would not allow any of the press to set foot on the island, and that she would not have to pose for the cameras in any way. I suggested that she should just go about her normal business on the beach with the two boys, and I would do my best to oversee the operation from a boat alongside the press boats offshore. Once again she immediately grasped our main problem.

‘But can they be trusted, Ken?’ Of course, I had no way of knowing, but I tried to reassure her by saying that I felt the press could be relied on to deliver their side of the bargain, since it was in the interests of all parties for the deal to hold up. After a few minutes, and with a little gentle persuasion from her brother, for which I was extremely grateful, she agreed. I
was almost certain that Kent Gavin was right, and that, deep down, she was quite looking forward to having pictures of her, looking sensational in a swimsuit, splashed across the front pages of the world’s press, but she was not going to let me know that.

I called Kent at once and told him the deal was on, adding, as ominously as I could, that if he or his colleagues broke it I would never trust him or Fleet Street again. The laid-back photographer said that he would do his very best to deliver what he had promised. So at eleven the next morning I boarded a small boat and sailed out to the press launches moored offshore. When I arrived the hacks and photographers were in fine form, jostling for the best position and joking with each other. They were obviously relieved that their expensive journey had not been wasted, and that their editors – and ultimately the public – were going to get the pictures and stories they wanted.

The paparazzi were grouped together on a smaller boat moored a few yards away. They were deathly quiet, acknowledging my arrival with a nod almost in unison. Unlike the Fleet Street crew they were not interested in glory or lavish picture by-lines on the front pages. They were in it just for the money. I repeated the rules of engagement and briefed them all about what was going to happen. I then bluntly refreshed their memories about the deal we had struck, pressing the point that after this photo call they would leave the Princess alone. Again there were a few nods, this time of agreement, but I knew that in trusting them, I was going out on a limb.

Within a few minutes the Princess and her family appeared on the beach. She looked sensational, and played her role to
perfection. I had suggested that she should play with her sons on the beach, within sight of the cameras, but what followed surprised even me. Surrounded by her sons and their five cousins, she proceeded to let them bury her in the sand, laughing all the while. Then, having extricated herself, she threw off her sundress, revealing her bikini underneath, and raced William and Harry, then aged eight and five, down to the sea to rinse off the sand. Her body gleamed with water in the hot sun, and the camera shutters clicked in frenzy. It was, as ever, a masterly display by the consummate public-relations professional.

After about twenty minutes I called a halt to the photo shoot – if they hadn’t got enough pictures by now, then they shouldn’t be in the job. To a man, paparazzi included, they all stopped immediately, clearly elated at the photographs they had got. We fired up the boats’ engines and headed for Biras Creek where I told them in no uncertain terms that this was the end and that, no matter how much I normally loved seeing their smiling faces, I did not want to see any of them again on this trip.

All of them agreed that it had been a fantastic photo call, one of the best they had ever had. They gave me credit for it, but it was the Princess who had made it work. Once again I asked them to leave us alone. I was convinced that some would stick around, but most of them, mainly the British freelancers, would leave. But somehow I knew that the French, who never took no for an answer, would be back for more. James Whitaker left me decidedly sceptical as he led Fleet Street’s chorus of approval. ‘Never mind all that, James – just deliver your side of the deal,’ I said as I left.

Back home in Britain, the newspaper editors were delighted. Diana, looking absolutely wonderful, was splashed across the front pages of most papers, especially the tabloids. Under banner headlines, Diana sent her message back to her errant husband, who she suspected would have been enjoying secret trysts with his married lover, Camilla, while she was far away on Necker. ‘I’m here without you, and I’m having a wonderful time,’ it might have read.

However happy the press and the Princess may have been, my superiors at Scotland Yard were furious. When I contacted head office by telephone, I was told that the photo call had caused quite a stir back in London, and that senior officers were not happy about my involvement, which had been reported in the press. I was formally reminded by the Metropolitan Police’s senior management that my role was not that of a press officer, but a protection officer. It was my turn to be incensed. I told them in no uncertain terms that I would be sending them a full report into what had happened on Necker, in which I would explain exactly why I had acted as I had done (with, I may say, Graham Smith’s full support). Warming to my theme, I added that I was looking forward to hearing exactly how the geniuses who sit behind their desks in Scotland Yard would have handled the situation, a situation for which there had not, until then, been any precedent. Finally, I reminded them that I had a difficult job to do here, and that I was getting zero assistance or guidance from London, either from Scotland Yard or Buckingham Palace. I then stormed off in indignation to have a cocktail – virgin of course, since I was on duty – to calm myself down. It worked. As I watched a spectacular orange
sunset sinking below the horizon I could not help laughing out loud at the way the whole business had turned out.