The Princess & Mr P
”’DON’T look back, look forward.” That’s what former florist and one-time Royal butler Paul Burrell tells himself every morning as he wakes up in his new Florida home.
| ”And this is a picture of my mum” |
And true to his word, the 46-year-old is looking forward to a time when he can complete a whole sentence, let alone an interview, without mentioning former employer Princess Diana.
But that time has not yet come – and so, as he invites Hello! in to see what $300,000 and a truckload of bad taste gets you these days, we find him looking so far forward that to some it might appear that he is actually looking back.
”I did say I would never write a book about the Princess,” says the man who has recently written a book about the Princess, ”but I never ever imagined I would be in those circumstances, having to justify my relationship with her in a public way and having to defend my family name.”
Even then, when the name Burrell – a byword through the ages for selfless devotion to duty – was in danger of being dragged through the mud, Paul had to think carefully before putting pen to paper.
He had to weigh up the pros (a large cheque with his name on it) and the cons (having to pay 40% of it away in tax) and decided to go ahead.
”So I did go back on my word,” he admits, ”but you should never say never because you don’t know what’s around the corner.”
So what about a follow-up book, an expose of who and what went on inside the Princess’s boudoir?
”Never, never, never, never in a million years,” says the man who never says never, ”will I discuss with anyone what the Princess did with other men in her love relationships because it’s none of my business.”
And don’t think for a minute that’s because Paul doesn’t know.
”I don’t need to read anybody’s book about the Princess because, let’s face it, I was there.”
Which must come as a bit of a shock to the likes of James Hewitt, who thought that scratching around in the corner of the Princess’s bedroom was just the famous Kensington Palace rats.
But that’s all in the past – Paul thinks about the Princess ”in the same way as my mother, who passed away two years before the Princess”.
Mind you, he doesn’t have a signed picture of his mother in his spacious main reception room. Nor has he got the whip Harrison Ford gave his mother framed and hanging on the wall.
”She has to be there, of course,” he explains of Diana. ”She’s part of our family. In a strange way, I’ve fulfilled one of her dreams – it was always her ambition to have a property in the US.”
And to share it with Paul, his lovely wife Maria and their two teenaged sons Alex and Nick…’
Posted: 23rd, January 2005 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
