Who is Princess Diana’s ballet teacher Anne Allan?
PRINCESS Diana's private ballet tutor has spoken for the first time in a new Channel 4 documentary.
Here's all you need to know about Anne Allan, the dance teacher who was one of Diana's closest confidants in the early days of her troubled marriage,
Who is Anne Allan and how did she know Princess Diana?
Glasgow-born Anne Allan is a dance coach and choreographer with years of experience in stage shows and TV. She now works in Canada.
In the early 1980s she was hired as a private ballet tutor to Diana, Princes of Wales.
She says Diana first approached her for lessons in 1981 when she was an instructor at the English National Ballet.
During their sessions together the princess took her into her confidence and shared intimate details of her life and marriage.
Now she has spoken about it, apparently for the first time in public, in the controversial Channel 4 documentary Diana: In Her Own Words.
Anne tells how dancing helped Diana cope with the stress of her turbulent marriage to Prince Charles.
She says: “When I first met her you could see that there was a huge shyness. But over time as we went through our dance class realised just how much dance meant to her.
“She had dance in her soul. I realised the pure enjoyment that it gave her. She loved the freeness of being able to move and dance. She loved it. I could see it helped to alleviate her emotional life. That was hard for her at that time.”
"At one point, I pirouetted and she pushed me down; then I carried her across the stage. I remember thinking, don’t drop the future Queen of England.
"She loved it, but was most thrilled we’d kept it secret from Charles, and our rehearsals away from the paparazzi.
"She loved the freedom dancing gave her. A few days later, I got a letter. She wrote: 'Now I understand the buzz you get from performing'.”
What did Anne Allan reveal in the 2017 Diana documentary?
Anne told how Diana struggled to cope with Charles cheating on her with Camilla Parker-Bowles, and the stress of her failing marriage led to her bulimia.
She says: “I noticed that she had lost a little bit of weight and that’s when she told me that was bulimic. It was pure pressure, stress.”
Anne tells the documentary: “She loved Charles, yes. But Charles loved another woman. It’s very hard for any woman when you love someone and you realise that perhaps they don’t love you.
“I think it made her very sad - devastated. She felt she wasn’t enough.
“She told me that she was pregnant and she wanted to give her marriage absolutely everything that she could. She really wanted everybody to feel proud, but particularly Charles.
“It was very important because of course he was going to be the future king.
“She realised that Charles was seeing Camilla, and I just remember being quite horrified about what she was telling me, and at the same time rather shocked. She was worried about what it was that was going on.
“I know that she did ask Camilla to leave her husband alone. I thought that was quite brave of her actually because I know how much that must have taken for her to do that.
“What can you do about it? All you can do is to try to make the marriage work and hope in time that things change, but that’s not really what happened.”
What are the Diana Tapes?
For the first time on British TV, Channel 4's Diana: In Her Own Words broadcast footage from tapes Diana recorded with voice coach Peter Settelen in 1992 and 1993.
The bombshell tapes included Diana's claims that Charles was encouraged to have a mistress by his father Prince Philip and that the Queen failed to give any advice when she went sobbing to her for help.
She also revealed how she fell in love with a police bodyguard and her belief he was "bumped off" to avoid embarrassment to the Royal Family.
Friends of the late princess blasted Channel 4 for showing the "tawdry blood money" tapes, which they said would hurt her sons William and Harry.
And a pal of Mr Settelen said he had betrayed Diana by selling the private tapes.
Channel 4 bosses said they are an important historical record, while Diana's own former private secretary also backed the broadcast as it reveals "a thoughtful and often funny Princess finding her voice as the teller of her own story.”