Prince Charles' office has denied any wrongdoing after reports that the British royal accepted bags of cash for his charity. The money was a donation from a Qatari politician.
the popular perception is that the prince of wales was straying all the way through his marriage, and that is definitely, unequivocally not the case. the first person that strayed was the princess. he went back to see mrs. parker-bowles after he learned about her affair with mannakee. nobody is the villain. in my view, everybody s a victim. he was under a lot of pressure to get married, and she too was a victim of this whole process. the worst day of my life was just realizing that charles had gone back to camilla. prince charles never really stopped loving camilla parker-bowles. when the opportunity arose, he went back to her. when you analyze these two different affairs, there s a huge difference. charles was rejecting diana because he loved somebody else. diana was never really rejecting charles.
the excuse being used to the prince of wales was these domestic circumstances, the hours he was working. they went on a joint engagement, and she was clearly very upset. the prince of wales approached me and said, why is the princess behaving in the way she is? what on earth is the matter? so i said, you ve got to talk to her. and he said, well, i ve tried all that and the only thing that seems to be upsetting her is that barry mannakee is going back to uniform. and if she s that upset, barry can stay. at that stage i was forced to say, well, sir, if he stays then i m afraid i ll have to leave. and i think at that point, the penny dropped. he was utterly shocked and was clearly, clearly very upset.
she never had a boyfriend before she met charles, and she s living life almost in reverse. i do understand why someone like princess diana, who didn t have a loving husband or a happy marriage, would become susceptible to looking at barry mannakee. he s representing everything that she doesn t have in her life. warmth, strength, presence. my main thing was to try and persuade her just how dangerous and impossible it would be for her to remain with the boys. it was just lunacy. it was incredibly high risk for diana. it was right under charles nose. it also makes you wonder about how much attention she was getting from charles if he was missing it. the way she felt was so strong, it wasn t going to stop. we arranged for barry to be transferred away from the department.
if diana has got the love and affection from prince charles, she would never have dreamt of looking elsewhere. diana herself said when she was in her early 20s she fell madly in love with a man that worked for the royal household. by diana s own admission, she played with fire and she got badly burned. i was the personal protection officer for the princess of wales for nine years. barry mannakee was a protection officer in our team. and i started to notice her behavior was unusual when we were anywhere near barry mannakee, which was certainly indicating that something may have happened between them. so i decided to talk to her about it. and for the first 20 minutes she absolutely categorically denied it, but then she told me exactly what was going on. she was having some sort of relationship with mannakee. she was smitten. she s having her first crush after her marriage.