What the Butler Unleashed

By J.F.O. McAllister/London Monday, Nov. 18, 2002
    • At royal flummery, no one beats the British. Last Wednesday, accompanied by retainers with ancient titles like the Rouge Croix Pursuivant, Queen Elizabeth processed into the House of Lords to open Parliament by reading a dull speech in a firm voice. But underneath the imperial crown, the 76-year-old monarch looked drawn and frail, perhaps because of something else the British are best at: royal scandal.

    Once more the baleful ghost of Diana, people's princess and petulant self-promoter, is roiling the House of Windsor. Her unlikely agent for this work is her former butler Paul Burrell, the man she called "my rock," who, as one of his last duties, dressed her after she died. His trial for stealing a stash of her goods collapsed spectacularly this month when police couldn't deliver on their claim that Burrell had been peddling them, and the Queen then provided proof of his good intentions by recalling that he told her in 1997 he would take these belongings for safekeeping.


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    Burrell is still devoted to Diana — besotted is more like it — and to the Queen. Though he sold his story for $650,000 to a British TV network and the Mirror, a London tabloid, he carefully protected Diana's and the Queen's reputations as he blabbed, and even turned down a rival offer of $3 million to dish all the dirt he knew.

    But dirt there is, flying all over London, kicked up by papers whose checks he rejected. The revenge frenzy threw off a raft of titillating revelations: Burrell sneaked Diana's lovers into Kensington Palace in the trunk of his car; he drove her around London at night so she could give away money to prostitutes; she once greeted her lover Hasnat Khan wearing only a fur coat and jewels; she bought pregnancy tests in drugstores for fun; Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, was said to have written Diana calling her a "trollop." Most of this did not really change what is known about Diana or the Windsors, though it sure moved papers.

    More serious for the monarchy were barbs aimed squarely, as Diana so often did in life, at Prince Charles. The most lurid is an allegation that an aide to Charles had raped George Smith, the Prince's valet, which Charles was then supposed to have hushed up. This lost some steam when police said they had investigated and that Smith had twice made similar charges that could not be substantiated. There is also a claim that his aides sold gifts Charles disliked, reportedly to the tune of $150,000 a year, and took a cut of the proceeds. Thrown in for good measure is a tale of a gay orgy aboard the royal yacht Britannia and gay sex between an undisclosed member of the royal family and a servant. All the careful p.r. work that had burnished the monarchy's image in this 50th year of the Queen's reign dissolved in a chorus of public amazement and anger. Charles ordered an inquiry into the allegations concerning his employees and actions, to be conducted by a tough criminal barrister. But he put his private secretary in overall charge, which seemed a daft way to defeat charges of a cover-up.

    Burrell tried to escape the storm last week by flying to New York City with his wife and two sons for some R. and R.--and an interview with ABC's Elizabeth Vargas. Fun was not abundant. Pictures and letters he had sent as a young man to an alleged gay lover came out back home. And he was trashed as the "Queen of Mean" by the New York Post for reportedly allowing an aide to give three bellhops a $10 tip to share. But all this was good publicity for his TV appearance. ABC purchased a documentary about Burrell's trial, along with an interview with a British newscaster, for an amount rumored to be $175,000 to $400,000, prompting charges that the network was really laundering a payment for the Vargas interview.

    ABC stoutly denies this, but has got its money's worth anyway. The programs are weirdly gripping, with Burrell coming across as tough but innocent, still blinded by Diana's radiance. But the best TV may be yet to come: Diana's video diary, seven tapes in all, seized by the police when they raided Burrell's house. Could a copy be floating around? Some tabloids would like to know. So would the Queen.