Having agreed a statement with Harry, Mig returned the call to the News of the World. In so doing he confirmed the story but bought himself an opportunity to get Harry’s defence in at the earliest possible stage. The paper was briefed about how Harry was a good friend of the Pakistani cadet in question. In fact the two were still in contact, having spent forty-four weeks together serving in the same Sandhurst platoon. Mig insisted that the comments were not meant in a derogatory fashion and that it was a nickname that originated from the cadet himself.
As for the ‘rag head’ comment, Mig steered the News of the World to the fact that this term was actually very commonly used in the military. Rather than mean someone who wore a turban for religious reasons, it was common Army slang for a Taliban insurgent fighting in Afghanistan.
For their part the News of the World agreed to include the statement and the guidance which could be written up as coming from a ‘senior source’. But when the paper hit the doormats of more than three million homes the following day, the front page carried a picture of Harry in uniform next to the headline: ‘Harry’s Racist Video Shame’.
Within hours the story was leading the news bulletins across Britain, and had been picked up in America, Australia, Canada and all over the world. Once again Harry was at the centre of a huge storm. The situation was not helped by the fact that Pakistan was itself a Commonwealth country, and Harry’s grandmother the head of the Commonwealth.
The News of the World made painful reading for the Royals that day. The Queen, who was still on her break at Sandringham, had been made aware of the story the previous night. Prince Charles was similarly horrified by the news, although he too felt it was a low blow given the number of years that had passed since his son had made the video.
When these situations arise, the Royals and their advisers go into a sort of lockdown mentality. The media teams are instructed not to do or say anything that might fuel the situation, and Harry himself was told to keep a low profile for the foreseeable future. Royal stories spread like wildfire but they always die down over time. The best strategy for Mig and his principal was to let the story run its course and hope that it went away quickly.
As the prince was a serving officer, the military had a role to play in the fall-out from the ‘Paki row’ story. He was summoned to what is known in the Army as ‘an interview without coffee’. The Ministry of Defence let it be known that the Royal officer would be given ‘awareness’ training as a result of the video.
As for the Pakistani cadet, who was now a serving officer in his native country, he refused, despite the best efforts of the media, to say anything negative about his old Sandhurst chum.
What was interesting about this Royal row was once again the way that the public reacted to it. While segments of the media were portraying Harry as public enemy number one, the overwhelming majority of ordinary people seemed to shrug it off, as if to say ‘So what?’ People took the view that there was little difference between calling a Pakistani a Paki and calling a Scotsman a Scot.
Of course this view is a matter of debate and there is no doubt that the term had its origins in the racist abuse suffered by Pakistani immigrants who came to work in Britain in the Fifties and Sixties. But once again the public were reluctant to use the gaffe as a stick with which to beat Harry. He was popular, he had served his country, and it was after all a three-year-old piece of footage. Politicians and public figures who have found their careers destroyed by similar indiscretions must have wished the British masses could have shown the same level of forgiveness in their situation.
Again Harry had escaped relatively unscathed. The public knew he was not a racist, in the same way as they were happy to accept he was no Nazi. This was a prince making a mistake which angered the politically correct brigade but did little to annoy the ordinary man on the street. Harry’s popularity defies political correctness. He is seen as a prince of the people and once again his public were in no mood to hang him from the rafters.
Miguel Head had survived his first real test. The ‘Paki’ row had erupted on his watch, but had done little to damage the reputation of a Royal who was fast becoming the most popular member of his family.
Dickie Arbiter, the famous former press secretary to the Queen, gave several interviews in the wake of the story. He summed up the situation well when he told the BBC: ‘These comments were made three years ago. Anyone who knows Harry knows that he is a very different person than the young cadet who passed out of Sandhurst.’ Dickie was spot on. Since Harry made the video he had been to war, served his country and grown as a man. There was no way the public would allow a row like this to damage the standing the prince had earned in their eyes.
Once again the public reaction to Harry’s gaffe had told us more than the gaffe itself. The masses do not expect Harry to behave flawlessly, and if there is the odd hiccup along the way it’s a characteristic they rather like.
Covering the Royal beat so often means being asked about Harry. For some reason he sparks the public imagination in a way other members of the family could only dream of.
But there is one over-riding misconception about him, and one question which constantly arises when people ask about the prince they all wish they knew: ‘Well, is he?’ When I hear the words I know exactly what they are eluding to.
After Harry’s locks of ginger hair became visible as a child, an unpleasant and in many ways cruel rumour began to spread. It was not long after Harry was born that details of Diana’s extra-marital relationship with the Cavalry officer James Hewitt became public.
It has never ceased to amaze me how many people to this day want to know if there is indeed any truth in this thirty-year-old rumour. Often it is the very first question people ask when they realize I have covered Harry’s life for such a long time. Even all these years after Diana’s death the Royal rumour mill continues, thanks to an affair she had when her marriage to Prince Charles was already in tatters.
My friend and Diana’s former police bodyguard Ken Wharfe recalls in his memoirs that Diana herself was greatly angered by the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, and I can only imagine how Harry must feel when he reads the conspiracy theories about his paternity repeated time and time again.
Ken tackles the issue head-on when he writes: ‘A simple comparison of dates proves it is impossible for Hewitt to be Harry’s father.
‘Only once did I ever discuss it with her, and Diana was in tears about it. She didn’t usually care what lies Charles’s friends told about her, but if anyone turned on her sons it wounded her deeply.
‘The nonsense should be scotched here and now. For one thing, the dates do not add up. Harry was born on 15 September 1984, which means he was conceived around Christmas 1983, when his brother, William, was 18 months old.
‘Diana did not meet James Hewitt until the summer of 1986.
‘The red hair that gossips so love to cite as “proof” is, of course, a Spencer trait, as anyone who has ever seen a photograph of Diana’s sister, Jane, for example, as a young woman will be able to testify.
‘The one person who knew beyond doubt the identity of Harry’s father was Diana, and she told me: “I don’t know how my husband and I did have Harry, because by then he had gone back to his lady, but one thing that is certain is that we did.”’
Although no one has ever confirmed this, I have little doubt that the children born so high up in the Royal blood line would undergo DNA testing as infants. But even if that is not the case, Ken Wharfe’s assertions are right on the money.
Harry and his family have to cope with urban myths being spread about them as if they were fact. In this case I hope that the real facts speak for themselves and people will realize there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that has dogged him throughout his life.
The dust soon settled on the ‘Paki row’ story and Harry was able to focus on his next step, trying to make the grade on his pilot’s training.
Having got through the first grading, in January 2009 the pri
nce headed off to RAF Shawbury, Shropshire, where he began his demanding course learning the basics of how to fly helicopters rather than fixed-wing aircraft.
The secluded base in the north of England took Harry well out of sight of the London-based photographers and gave him a period to focus entirely on the job in hand. For the next nine months he would rack up forty hours of flying, during which he needed to master take-off, basic helicopter handling, landing and various emergency drills.
But there was added benefit of being based at RAF Shawbury. For the first time since they briefly shared a term at Sandhurst, Harry and William would live in the same place. William had by then left the Army and joined the RAF. He went to the same school of rotary flying as his brother in a bid to become a search and rescue pilot.
William had successfully passed out of Sandhurst two terms after Harry. But his Army career was never going to be more than a fleeting glimpse of what it was like to serve in the military. William went to RAF Shawbury knowing that he needed to complete the course if his hopes of becoming a search and rescue pilot were to be realized.
But for Harry the stakes were far higher. If he completed the course he would progress to learning to fly one of the Army Air Corps’s helicopters. Ultimately this was his only realistic chance of getting back to the front line, even if it meant a long period of learning new skills.
The Shawbury base itself was nothing special, and after only a few weeks there the princes decided to find somewhere they could both live while coming to terms with the gruelling training schedules. As luck would have it, they found a place less than three miles from the base, near the small village of Clive. It was the converted stable block of a stately home, and large enough for their protection officers to stay without getting in the way.
The year 2009 may have started badly for Harry when the video emerged but now he was to enjoy several months in the relative normality of a life away from the cameras and the drag of official Royal duties. He had a chance to spend time with his brother as they argued about who would do the dishes and how bad William’s cooking really was.
Surrounded by rolling hills and beautiful countryside, William and Harry’s digs quickly became a home from home and there is little doubt that the low-key time they spent together helped their bond as brothers to grow even stronger.
William and Harry are very close, not least because of their shared experiences as children. After their mother’s death the boys shared a mutual need for support. They became far closer than normal siblings and the luck of being posted together marked a golden few months for the Royal brothers.
It was during this time of sharing a home together away from London that they were also able to share their feelings about being princes in long-term relationships. Although William and Kate had had their ups and downs, they were by now entering the next stage of their relationship. Wedding bells may not have quite been on the cards at that stage, but it was already clear that Wills and Kate were going to go the distance.
For Harry, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that while his brother was heading for the altar, his romance with Chelsy was heading in a very different direction.
CHAPTER 14
CHELSY SPLIT
‘Relationship: Not in one,’ read Chelsy Davy’s updated Facebook profile. These four words confirmed the rumours that Harry’s first real romance was over. After months of heated rows, long times apart and the distraction of two careers heading in radically different directions, it seemed there really had been trouble in paradise for the young lovers.
Of course the profile could be fake. Or maybe it was an attempt to hoodwink the media and buy the couple some desperately needed space away from the spotlight. But with a quick call to one of the fiery Zimbabwean’s close friends it was immediately obvious that the Harry and Chelsy show had come to an end.
The timing of the post was also a giveaway. It was the end of January 2009 and the prince was just two weeks into his pilot’s course at RAF Shawbury. Ahead of him were months of intensive training which would prevent him from spending more than the occasional weekend with the first girl who had won his heart.
Chelsy meanwhile was in her final few months at Leeds University and was studying hard to become a lawyer. Any spare time she had would have to be spent finishing essays and preparing for tough law exams. Even if Harry had the time to spare, his girlfriend was far too busy to be whisked away for the usual exotic trip and a chance for them to patch things up.
After five years we now knew that, try as they might, the two who had met in the carefree days of Harry’s gap year simply couldn’t make their relationship work. Sources insisted they still ‘love each other to bits’, it was just that all good things have to come to an end. But for Harry the split from Chelsy came as a bitter blow, even if in his heart of hearts he couldn’t have claimed it was a surprise.
The couple’s problems had been with them from the start. They lived thousands of miles apart, and any time they spent together seemed more like a honeymoon than a real life relationship. Paddling down the Orange River in Namibia, or sitting round a campfire on the safari planes of Botswana may have had an appeal in the early days but it was a far cry from a normal, stable relationship.
And then there was the ‘Royal’ elephant in the room. To Chelsy’s credit, she never had an interest in becoming a princess. The thought of marrying into the Royal family filled her with dread. So, ironically, one of the major reasons Harry was so attracted to Chelsy in the first place, her independent spirit, was to become the central factor that tore their relationship apart.
According to more than one of her friends, the relationship had been doomed from the word go. While they were excited to see Chelsy so besotted with a man who adored her and treated her with the utmost respect, they could see how his status as a Royal, and all the baggage that entailed, terrified the free-spirited African.
The daughter of a wealthy landowner whose game reserve was twice the size of Surrey, Chelsy was born in Zimbabwe and grew up on her family’s home near Bulawayo. Her early life could not have been more different from Harry’s. Nor for that matter could it have been further away from the kind of life you might expect for a girl who would one day win the heart of a prince.
While the ‘Chelsea Set’ of trust fund girls were growing up playing princesses and enjoying life in the pampered world of their wealthy aristocratic families, Chelsy’s upbringing must have seemed like it had landed from another planet. Rather than attending a posh pre-school surrounded by the sons and daughters of the wealthy elite, she spent her early days trying to stop the wild animals from interrupting her lessons.
In a rare interview with The Times aimed at promoting the jewellery line she set up in 2015, the then 30-year-old lifted the lid on just how unusual her early life experiences had been. She said: ‘Ever since I was born I’ve been on a farm. Giraffes, lions, you take it for granted because when you’re little it’s just your life. I used to get so sad at the weekend because all my friends in towns were going to sleepovers and I was stuck with a bunch of impala – “this sucks”. At my pre-school there were monkeys everywhere, stealing your crayons. All the kids ran around playing with warthogs. There’s a video of me on a plastic toy motorbike in front of a herd of buffalo, just having a stare-off. One of the managers had a pet hyena, it was very sweet. Looking back now, I see it was a very crazy upbringing and I feel very lucky.’
Inevitably growing up in that sort of environment required Chelsy to be tough and aware of the natural dangers of living in southern Africa. On one occasion when she was out in the wild lands owned by her father a deadly boomslang snake, as long as a man, fell on her head. Another encounter saw her ‘mock-charged’ by a bull elephant, a creature that has claimed hundreds of lives of those inexperienced enough to try and run. Chelsy recalled: ‘We both got a fright, but you can’t run, you must stand.’
By the time she turned fourteen the situation in her native Zimbabwe had become so bleak that she
persuaded her parents to allow her to go to boarding school in England. It was a life-changing decision which ultimately would lead to her being introduced to the teenage third-in-line to the throne.
Although Zimbabwe had enjoyed many years of relative peace and ethnic harmony under the regime of its despotic leader Robert Mugabe, by the time Chelsy was in her teens the country was becoming increasingly hostile towards wealthy white farmers. Mugabe’s infamous land reform programme saw dozens of white farmers thrown off their land and forced to flee. Even her father Charles, although well-connected, was forced to give up all of his arable land. Chelsy’s grandparents’ farm was forcibly seized and their home destroyed. ‘It was really sad,’ said Chelsy. ‘They’d had that farm all of their lives. It got taken away overnight. It happened to everyone. It was a tough, tough time.’
With the political situation rapidly deteriorating, Chelsy’s father Charles and mother Beverley agreed to her demand to study overseas. It was a huge culture change for a girl who had spent most of her life running around in bare feet.
With no family or friends in the UK, Chelsy and her parents flew to England to try and find a school that would suit her. But the school directory they had brought with them was so out of date that the first college they phoned had been closed for ten years.
Eventually they chose Cheltenham Ladies’ College, but before long she moved to the more suitable Stowe School, in Buckinghamshire, a predominantly boys’ school. Set in the magnificent surrounds of a stately home, Stowe must have seemed like a different world for the teenage Chelsy. As one of the most exclusive private schools in England, it boasts a list of famous alumni, including the multi-millionaire Richard Branson.
In her interview Chelsy revealed how it felt to arrive in the UK and how different she felt from everyone else. Recalling the culture shock she experienced on joining Cheltenham Ladies’ College, she said she felt like Crocodile Dundee. ‘You should have seen the way I looked. Very odd. I wore ridiculous things. I didn’t know anything about fashion. Living in Zim, no one had many clothes, no one cared.
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