by Penny Junor
The Prince of Wales was widely applauded for his action. “The way Prince Charles and the Royal Family have handled it is absolutely right,” proclaimed Tony Blair, “and they have done it in a very responsible and, as you would expect, a very sensitive way for their child.” Peter Martin, Chief Executive of Addaction, Britain’s largest drug and alcohol treatment agency, said, “The Prince of Wales has acted with deep sensitivity and very quickly, which is exactly what is needed.” To which the Department for Education added, “Parents play a very important role, as demonstrated by Prince Charles, who has set an extremely good example.”
The story, as it appeared, was not strictly true, while suppressing a more damaging story. Harry had visited Featherstone Lodge, but he had gone with Mark Dyer, not his father, and they had gone in the summer of 2001, at least two months before the News of the World published the story about the Rattlebone. The visit had absolutely nothing to do with his own behavior.
As Mark Bolland subsequently admitted in an interview with the Guardian, “Presenting the center as the great solution to the problem was something that I was embarrassed about. It was misleading.” But it had come about because, “We had been wrestling every two weeks for about nine months with several newspapers, principally the News of the World, on stories about William and drinking and/or drugs, all of which were untrue, and then Harry—drinking and drugs—as well. We were going to the limits to stop newspapers writing things about Harry.
“There… was a particular incident that summer in Spain, photographs that allegedly showed Harry in a drunk or drugged condition. That particular incident went on for most of the summer and the News of the World pushed very, very hard to run that story and didn’t because we just said it was untrue, that all the information they had, the witness statements they had [were false].
“We pushed it to the limit that time with the News of the World. It was a screaming match. I think [they] thought that we had misled them. I think that provoked the News of the World to take a very close interest in Harry. They then had a big investigation down in Gloucestershire and confronted us with what they had found. Their dossier of evidence was compelling. We had to make a choice. Did we fight again to stop these allegations appearing in the newspaper, or did we accept that the News of the World was going to print something and make the best of it?”
He decided to make the best of it. He told the paper about Harry’s visit to the rehab center and, instead of an unremittingly negative story about drink and drugs, it turned into a heart-warming story about Charles’s sensitive and responsible parenting. Even the Queen publicly praised the way he had handled the problem.
According to locals, the News of the World had sent a couple of young reporters to live in the village for a month and infiltrate the Rattlebone. They had been introduced as relatives of a regular customer and a sum of £35,000 is rumored to have changed hands.
Steve Hoare, half of a rock band called Nobodys Business, which used to play in the Rattlebone, admits that the lock-ins certainly happened, but never saw any drugs in the pub when William or Harry were around—and, if there had been some, their older friends from the polo club would have been on to it like a flash. As for the incident with the Frenchman, François Ortet, known to everyone as “French Frank,” Steve was there that night and says it was just playful banter. They were friends and the Frenchman gave as good as he got.
Harry was at school when the News of the World story appeared and it was Andrew Gailey who once again had to pick up the pieces. William had left Eton in the summer of 2000, so was no longer on hand to help. After a gap year spent traveling with Mark Dyer and working in Africa and Central and South America, he had gone to St. Andrews University in Scotland. But even when they were thousands of miles apart, they were only a phone call away, and they did speak frequently. William took every blow that Harry suffered very much to heart, as his tutors knew only too well. Just as Harry too felt every knock and setback that William experienced.
“Harry really resented the way he was made to look bad so that his father could look good,” says a friend. “He understood why it happened, and I don’t think he blamed his father, but the idea that Harry had gone to a rehab center a year before because Prince Charles had seen the way things were going is a blatant load of bollocks. Prince Charles didn’t have any idea what his son was up to. It was PR panic and spin and he really resents that he was made to take the rap for that.”
That same friend doubts that William would ever have taken drugs. “He’s quite canny, quite square in that way, I’d bet a lot of money he never has. He would never have been bullied into doing it because everyone else was. He would know absolutely if he was caught taking drugs it would be a catastrophe. He lets his hair down and puts down some serious drink on occasions, he certainly did as a student, and he likes a good night out with his friends, but he’s always quite careful to protect his image and not do anything that would really damage him. You get pissed, so what? Nobody cares; you take drugs, it tarnishes you for ever, and if you’re going to be King? No. But the idea of a good Prince, bad Prince was always a load of rubbish.”
What upset both boys, however, was that the News of the World placed the blame for Harry’s cannabis use on a mutual friend, Guy Pelly. He was said to “have encouraged Harry to experiment with the drug at a private party in Tetbury,” and taken it into Highgrove so Harry could smoke it at parties there. The Prince of Wales had done up the basement as a den which was known as Club H. A family friend was quoted as saying, “Prince Harry fell in with a bad lot. Guy Pelly, who has a drink-drive conviction and is a student at Cirencester, was the worst influence. It was Pelly who introduced Harry to cannabis in June last year.” It’s more likely Harry was introduced to cannabis at Eton, where, despite a policy of zero tolerance, it was plentiful, as it was in most schools.
Pelly took the hit for his friend, and his name and reputation were trashed by the media; he was even forced to give up his farm management course at the Royal Agricultural College because of the row. Yet, in all the years, he has only once made any comment about it. “I have never dealt in drugs at Highgrove, at the Rattlebone Inn or anywhere else,” he said. “I have never taken drugs with Prince Harry or supplied any drugs to him. I have never used drugs at Highgrove or the Rattlebone Inn. I would like this categoric statement to put an end to the matter.” It’s a measure of the depth of loyalty and affection that he—like all of Harry’s close friends—feel towards the Prince that he was prepared to put up with the slur on his reputation and never attempt to clear his name further.
Five weeks later, although the newspapers reported that the Prince of Wales had forbidden Harry to see Guy Pelly again, he and his brother very publicly stood shoulder to shoulder with him on the terraces at Twickenham for a high-profile international rugby match.
ROCK ’N’ ROLL
Steve Hoare and his partner in Nobodys Business, Frank McQueen, had just set up their kit to play at an eighteenth birthday party in a village near Swindon. They were sitting on their upturned speakers, their guitars propped beside them, chatting, when suddenly a bread roll came hurtling through the air and missed Frank’s ear by a millimeter. Shocked and surprised, they scanned the room looking for some explanation. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Then they spotted a familiar mop of ginger hair behind one of the tables, the crouched figure laughing and pointing at Frank. “Right, I thought, he’s going to get that back,” he says, and immediately re-launched the roll. It missed Harry by a whisker, whereupon he leapt up and there were handshakes and hugs all round.
Steve and Frank were local, loud and gutsy—and Harry used to impersonate their broad Wiltshire accents. They sang songs by Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and played electric guitar to backing tracks. For many years they played at parties in north Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, and some of the pubs, including the Rattlebone, as well as at The Beaufort Polo Club. They rapidly became everyone’s favorite band, including William an
d Harry’s. They had met William first, after playing at a twenty-fifth birthday party in the neighboring village of Crudwell; he had sat around on hay bales afterwards, chatting to them with some friends. Steve remembers watching him on the dance floor, as his friends instinctively formed a protective barrier around him to fend off some young girls who were trying to muscle in. The next time they saw him, he was wearing one of the band’s T-shirts, which they often saw him in. He once told Steve he’d been wearing it over the weekend and “Granny asked what the logo was.”
They first met Harry a few weeks later at the Rattlebone. He came in with William and their cousins, Peter and Zara Phillips, and two of their regular companions from the polo club, Richard Skipper, known as Skip, who was a groom, and Caspar West, who was an instructor. It was August 2000 and Harry was not quite sixteen. “I remember him looking so young and trying to act all grown up,” says Steve. “He was very friendly and you could instantly tell he had a mischievous streak about him. During the break I was chatting to Skip and I remember Harry walking over and joining in the conversation. He asked me how everybody knew the words to the songs we were playing and admitted he didn’t know many of the tunes at all.” When Steve started playing again, Harry came and stood in front of him, staring at him, his nose about six inches from Steve’s face as he sang into the microphone. When Steve turned his head, Harry lent forward and kissed him mischievously on his cheek. Steve was nonplussed and very nearly lost the plot. He told Harry afterwards that he’d feared he might turn into a frog.
Throwing bread rolls and behaving in this rather odd and immature way was typical of Harry during his teens and it hadn’t endeared him to his peers in his early years at Eton. But beneath the immaturity was a boy with a very sweet nature, and impeccable manners, which most people warmed to.
Steve and Frank’s music always raised the roof and they ended the gig that night, as they invariably did, with the Status Quo number “Rockin’ All Over the World.” “Harry certainly knew this one and was joining in with Skip, Caspar and Will and the whole manic crowd on backing vocals to finish the night off in fine style.” As often as not after a gig, the landlord had an after-hours lock-in with only friends and regulars, and they would all sit around drinking and chatting until the small hours.
Both Princes enjoyed acting as the band’s roadies. Once Steve and Frank arrived to play at the polo club close to midnight, having already played an earlier gig in a pub. The clubhouse was packed and the party in full swing; everyone had spent the night waiting for them. As they drew up outside, William and Harry both came out to help them carry their guitars and amps and all their kit from their cars. “Excuse me, excuse me, move aside, the band’s coming through,” shouted Harry above the din and cleared an instant path to the front that they could never have managed alone. On another occasion, as they arrived to play at Victoria Inskip’s eighteenth birthday party (Victoria is the sister of Harry’s great friend Tom), Harry was standing with his back to them and, by way of greeting, Frank kicked him up the backside. Harry spun round indignantly, then saw who it was and was immediately all smiles and hugs.
Guy Pelly was one of that crowd of horsey, public-school-educated teenagers who hunted and played polo at The Beaufort Polo Club. He was originally William’s friend—he is three years older than Harry—but, as with many of their local friends, there is no real distinction about who is whose friend. The Glosse Posse, as these privileged inhabitants of Gloucestershire came to be called (the abbreviated Glos for Gloucestershire rhyming with Posse), were a close-knit group who had known each other for most of their lives and who, as they grew older, spent much of their time hanging around the bar at the polo club—with Westonbirt, the girls’ public school across the road, providing plenty of love interest—and at the local pubs. They frequented the Rattlebone, the Vine Tree at Norton (where Nobodys Business also played) and the Cat and Custard Pot at Shipton Moyne. These were the places where the Princes trusted the landlords and the locals and felt safe; and it is a measure of how polite, charming and loved both boys are, that although stories abound of late-night drunken antics, they normally go nowhere. Stories of Harry’s teenage romances are similarly circumspect, but there is no doubt he had a healthy appetite for pretty girls and that there was no shortage of choice. Girls threw themselves at both brothers, but Harry was the more reckless and he left a trail of them in his wake. To his credit, they were not always Sloane Rangers with double-barreled surnames.
In April a very pretty, tired and tearful young Swiss waitress was serving dinner at the Hotel Walserhof in Klosters where Harry had just been staying. In between sobs, she kept repeating, “Prince Harry has gone home.” The maître d’, Herbert Moser, apologized to the guests and explained that for the last two nights she and Prince Harry had been out partying at the local nightclub, Casa Antica, and hadn’t been back until 4:00 in the morning. Before he left, Harry had pressed a piece of paper into the girl’s hand with his contact details at Eton. Klosters in mid-season was little short of paradise for an attractive and adventurous sixteen-year-old, and it was not surprising that Harry should have explored the possibility of working at the hotel for part of his gap year, but he swiftly changed his mind when he was offered a highly unseasonal slot in October.
The annual Hunt Ball in December, a very swept-up, expensive, black-tie affair, was also fertile ground for attractive females, and the highlight of the horsey social calendar for young and old alike. That same year, 2001, it was held at Badminton House, and Nobodys Business were asked to play there for the first time. The Chance Band, which had come down from London, was the main attraction, playing in the main marquee, while Steve and Frank were in a small side marquee. But no sooner had they started to tune their guitars than their faithful polo club followers moved in to join them, including William and Harry. Within minutes the small tent was bursting at the seams, leaving the Chance Band to play to a decimated audience. Very soon Luke and Mark Tomlinson and William and Harry Wales were their self-appointed backing singers, belting out all the songs at the tops of their voices until Mark inadvertently hit the Stop button on the mini-disc player halfway through a song. At which point Frank and Steve threw them all off the stage.
That night Harry was knocking back champagne with the best of them and took a shine to a pretty 34DD blonde girl on the next table. Her name was Suzannah Harvey; she was a twenty-four-year-old model and TV presenter who, after a couple of intimate dances and few more glasses of champagne, was only too happy to be taken outside into the cold night and appreciated by the seventeen-year-old Prince. When they returned both of them were covered in mud—and the tale of their exploits were in the Sunday People. Fortunately for Harry, not many of the girls he has taken a fancy to over the years have been so keen to “kiss and tell,” which again speaks volumes about how well he must treat women; clearly he is usually able to inspire loyalty.
As Sandy says, “If you are a Prince and you’re straight, you are going to have women throwing themselves at you, but if you’re a decent human being, which he is, and you treat women with respect, which he does, they don’t tell. He made a mistake in judgment, oh dear. Get a life, people. He’s got an eye like his father. He’s attractive, he’s got a twinkle in his eye, let him get on with it. As long as he doesn’t hurt anyone, and from what I can gather he hasn’t.”
YET MORE LOSS
No twelve-year-old should ever have to lose a mother, and no eighteen-year-old should ever have to lose a best friend. But Harry did—and both of them in tragic and unnecessary accidents.
Just before Christmas in 2002, Harry heard the devastating news that his friend Henry van Straubenzee had been killed in a car crash. Because Harry had been held back a year at Ludgrove when Henry had gone on to Harrow, they were out of sync academically; after their usual holiday together in Polzeath that summer, Harry had gone back to school for his final year at Eton, while Henry had embarked on a gap year. He had won an Army scholarship to read Business Studies at Newca
stle the following year, and before that had plans to work with children at a school in Uganda. His brother, Thomas, had been to the same school on his gap year two years earlier. After Newcastle Henry was destined for Sandhurst and his father’s old regiment, the Royal Green Jackets (now The Rifles) continuing a family tradition that hadn’t been broken in 150 years. But before any of that, he was earning some money by working at Ludgrove, their old prep school.
The term was over and members of staff were having a farewell Christmas party. The next day he was going home to Hertfordshire and flying out to Uganda straight after Christmas. In the early hours of the morning, the sound system stopped working so he and a friend drove down the drive to borrow a CD player from a friend. It was a foggy night, they had both been drinking, and because they were on a private road, neither of them was wearing a seat belt. On the way back, doing no more than 27 mph, the car collided with the only tree in the driveway. Henry was killed instantly and his friend, who had been at the wheel, was gravely injured.
Words cannot adequately describe how Harry must have felt when he heard the news. Shock, disbelief, anger, emptiness, grief. He must have felt that he was in danger of losing everyone close to him. That year alone he’d lost two members of the family and, although those deaths had not been sudden or unexpected like this, for someone so young and as sensitive as Harry, it was a lot to process.
