Prince William and Harry reveal ‘lifetime of regret’ over cutting short final call to mum Diana before her death – as they pour their hearts out in candid interview
The pair bared their souls in the 20th year since Diana died in a Paris car crash — vowing never to speak so candidly again
PRINCES William and Harry have told of their agony over their final phone call with mum Diana the day she died.
And they revealed they have been tormented ever since by all the things they would have said had they known her awful fate.
The pair bared their souls in the 20th year since Diana died in a Paris car crash — vowing never to speak so candidly again.
Harry, now 32, recalled how he was told: “Harry, Harry, Mummy’s on the phone” while at Balmoral in 1997.
He said: “Right my turn, off I go, you know, pick up the phone and it was her speaking from Paris.
“I can’t really necessarily remember what I said but all I do remember is, probably, regretting for the rest of my life how short the phone call was.
“And, if I’d known that that was the last time I was going to speak to my mother, the things that I would have said to her.
“Looking back now, it’s incredibly hard. I have to sort of deal with that the rest of my life.
“Not knowing that was the last time I was going to speak to my mum, and how differently that conversation would have panned out if I’d had even the slightest inkling that that was, that, you know, that her life was going to be taken that night.”
‘We were just in a rush to say goodbye’
Duke of Cambridge William, 35, said: “I think Harry and I were just in a desperate rush to say goodbye. You know, ‘See you later’ and we’re going to go off.
She sent the rudest cards
HARRY revealed his mischievous mum was “a total kid, through and through”.
He said: “One of her mottos to me was, ‘You can be as naughty as you want, just don’t get caught’. She was one of the naughtiest parents.
“She would come and watch us play football and, you know, smuggle sweets into our socks.
“And I mean like literally walking back from a football match and having sort of five packets of Starburst.
“And just the whole shirt was just bulging with sweets and then sort of looking around, open the tuck box, throw it all in, lock it up.”
William said: “She loved the rudest cards you could imagine. And I would be at school and I’d get a card from my mother.
“Usually she found something very embarrassing — a very funny card — and then wrote very nice stuff inside.
“But I dared not open it in case the teachers or anyone else in the class had seen it.”
“If I’d known what was going to happen I wouldn’t have been so blasé about it and everything else. But that phone call sticks in my mind quite, quite heavily.”
The Duke clammed up when asked if he remembered what his mother said to him — replying simply: “I do, I do.”
William and Harry spoke during hour-long interviews for ITV documentary Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy — due to air tomorrow night.
Harry also told how he cried for his mum only at her funeral and “maybe once” since then.
And he said that during his ten Army years he blocked out the grief with “white noise”.
The back seat rows
HARRY revealed the effect on the princes of Diana’s divorce from their dad Prince Charles.
He said: “There was the point where the two of us were bouncing between the two of them and we never saw our mother enough or never saw our father enough.
“There was a lot of travelling and a lot of fights on the back seat with my brother.
“So there was all of that to contend with.
“And I don’t pretend that we’re the only people to have to deal with that. But it was an interesting way of growing up.”
Di’s pal Harry Herbert said he visited at the height of her marriage crisis and found her “very emotional”.
He said: “Suddenly these two boys came thundering round the corner and you could see it was the most im- portant thing in her life.”
The prince revealed he had a momentary flood of emotion standing with Diana’s family at the island grave where she was buried in Althorp, Northants.
He said: “The first time I cried was at the funeral on the island. And probably only since then maybe, maybe once.
“So there’s a lot of grief that still needs to be let out.”
He added: “I was so young, I grew up sort of thinking that not having a mum was normal.
“I think it was a classic case of don’t let yourself think about your mum and the grief and hurt that comes with it.
It’s never going to bring her back and it’s only going to make you more sad. My way of dealing with it was just basically shutting it out.
She surprised me with three supermodels
WILLIAM recalled how he was left red-faced as a teenager when Diana gathered his favourite supermodels to say hello to him.
The duke was wracked with embarrassment, because he had pictures of Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington on his wall.
He said: “She organised, when I came home from school to have Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell waiting at the top of the stairs.
“I was probably a 12 or 13-year-old boy who had posters of them on his wall.
“And I went bright red and didn’t quite know what to say and sort of fumbled. I think I pretty much fell down the stairs on the way up. I was utterly sort of awestruck.
“But that was a very funny memory that’s lived with me forever about her loving and embarrassing and being, sort of, the joker.”
Diana also smuggled her sons into cinemas and burger bars and took them on road trips in her BMW.
Harry said: “My mother cherished those moments of privacy. She decided that, no matter what, she was going to ensure we had as normal a life as possible.”
“The years I was in the Army I dug my head in the sand and it was just white noise.”
Diana’s funeral followed days of national mourning which saw a sea of flowers laid outside London’s Kensington Palace.
Harry said: “It was very, very strange after her death, you know, the outpouring of love.
“I was thinking, ‘How is it so many people that never met this woman — my mother — can be crying and showing more emotion than I actually am feeling’?”
Harry also described the love with which his mum surrounded the young princes and, touchingly, the warmth of her hugs.
She'd have been a nightmare gran
WILLIAM said he is determined to pass on his mum’s memory to kids George and Charlotte by “talking about granny Diana”.
But he revealed the late princess would have been “a nightmare grandmother”.
He said: “She’d come in probably at bath-time and cause an amazing amount of scene — bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place — and then leave.”
William and wife Kate have put photos of the princess around the house so their children will feel they’ve grown up with her.
And he said he was eager to spend as much time as possible with George and Charlotte to cherish the early years as Di did.
The duke said: “It’s important they know who my mother was.
“Katherine didn’t know her, so she cannot really provide that level of detail. So I do.”
He said: “She’d engulf you and squeeze you as tight as possible. Even talking about it now I can feel the hugs she used to give us and I miss that feeling. I miss that part of a family — I miss having that mother to be able to give you those hugs and give you that compassion that I think everybody needs.”
The princes revealed crusading Diana wrote letters right up until her death — as they vowed to continue her legacy.
Harry said they found memos she had prepared putting the world to rights dated August 31, 1997 — the day of her death.
He said: “She was writing letters to certain people to say, ‘Right, this is what needs to happen in order for this whole sort of tidal wave to change’.
“It’s only recently that I’ve really understood the effect that she was having in those areas.”
William has taken up a cause close to his mother’s heart, helping Child Bereavement UK.
He said: “You do have a shared sort of pain that you can immediately understand.”
DUKE FELT PRESENCE
WILLIAM felt doting Diana was watching over him as he married wife Kate in April, 2011.
He said: “When it came to the wedding I did really feel she was there.
“And you know, there’s times when you look to someone or something for strength and I very much felt she was there for me.”
He added: “I think she’d be proud that Harry and I have managed to come through everything that’s happened, having lost her.
“And that gives me positivity and strength to know I can face anything the world throws at me.
“We felt, you know, incredibly loved — Harry and I. And I’m very grateful that that love still feels there, even 20 years on.
“And I think that’s a huge credit to her that I can still feel that now.”
WE HATED BEING IN MATCHING CLOTHES
THE princes said they were left cringing when Diana dressed them identically “in the most bizarre outfits”.
Never-before-seen photographs in the ITV documentary show them clad as policemen or in horse riding outfits.
Harry said: “I genuinely think that she got satisfaction out of dressing myself and William up in the most bizarre outfits.
“Normally matching. It was weird shorts and you know like, little sort of shiny shoes with the old clip on.
“Looking back at the photos it makes me laugh I just think, How could you do that to us’?”
He added: “So I like to think that she had great fun in dressing us up.
“I’m sure that wasn’t it, but I sure as hell am going to dress my kids up the same way.”
