New tapes reveal Diana was deeply in love police bodyguard

New tapes reveal Diana was deeply in love police bodyguard

For a young woman whose troubled life had become the focus of the world, the lure must have been irresistible. 'I want to bring a camera,' actor Peter Settelen told Princess Diana as he gave her voice-coaching sessions. 'I want you to see you and we will do your story. You can tell me your story, then you can watch.'

The video exercise would, he explained, 'show you who you are'.

No doubt the charming Settelen, who trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, meant what he said. And in shooting a total of 16 videos of his pupil at Kensington Palace, the former Coronation Street actor undoubtedly achieved what Diana was after — more confidence and authority in her public speaking on issues such as Aids and eating disorders.

These were private £50 lessons at her London home, and the tapes are understood to have been kept under lock and key by Diana. But after her death, the tapes, containing five hours of footage, were discovered in the possession of her former butler, Paul Burrell.

Understandably, Settelen was concerned. He embarked on a legal battle over the material and won ownership of the tapes in September 2003.

Yet a few months later, most unchivalrously, he did a deal for an undisclosed sum of money for them to be shown on the American TV network, NBC.

Although NBC was universally condemned for the purchase, it broadcast the tapes in 2004. Critics described the programme as a 'ghoulish striptease' and said those involved were no better than 'grave robbers'.



Now, 13 years on, Settelen has done another deal, this time with Channel 4, for the tapes to be seen for the first time in Britain. The programme, Diana: In Her Own Words, will be broadcast on Sunday, August 6, at 8pm.

Watching the Princess, many viewers are bound to wonder what the subject material had to do with voice coaching.

They will see a vulnerable Diana in January 1993, just a month after her separation from the Prince of Wales, talking openly about some of the most intimate aspects of her life: her relationship with Prince Charles (in particular the scarcity of lovemaking with him), his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, and her police bodyguard Sergeant Barry Mannakee, with whom she admits she fell 'deeply in love'.

She tells Settelen that after the birth of Prince Harry her sex life with Charles had deteriorated: 'There was never a requirement for it from him — once every three weeks, about — and I kept thinking it followed a pattern. He used to see his lady [Camilla] once every three weeks before we got married.'

Describing her thoughts as the marriage moved to crisis point, Diana told her voice coach: 'If I could write my own script I would have my husband go away with his woman and never come back.'

Of course, it must be stressed that these tapes were never intended to be made public. But her mention of Sgt Mannakee is most telling.



The policeman is one of the most intriguing figures in Diana's life. A burly, 6ft tall East End 'Jack the lad' whose father was a Ford car worker at Dagenham, Mannakee was 37 when he was posted to work as a personal protection officer at Kensington Palace in 1985, a year after the birth of Prince Harry, when the royal marriage was already in difficulty.

Diana doesn't name Mannakee on the tape but refers to him as 'somebody who worked in this environment', telling Settelen: 'He was the greatest fellow I have ever had. I was always waiting around trying to see him. Um, I just, you know, wore my heart on my sleeve. I was only happy when he was around.'



Asked by Settelen if he provided 'the intimacy you weren't getting', she replies: 'Yeah.'

The Princess adds: 'I was quite happy to give it all up (her royal life), just to go off and live with him. Can you believe it?'

Laughing at the memory, she goes on: 'And he kept saying he thought it was a good idea, too.'

But Diana also says she saw Mannakee as a 'father figure'. She explains: 'I was like a little girl in front of him the whole time. Desperate for praise. Desperate.'

As for Mannakee, who was married with two children, he had an easy familiarity with the Princess that irritated other police bodyguards. Soon this evolved into a closeness that made his colleagues feel 'quite uncomfortable'.

'We could see she liked him,' says a former colleague. 'It was 'Barry this' and 'Barry that'. But we never dreamt there was anything between them because Barry was a blabbermouth about such things. We assumed he'd have boasted about it. But he didn't.'

At a time of mounting turmoil for the Princess, Mannakee was a good listener who became an unexpected confidant, especially on their 90-minute drives taking William and Harry to Highgrove in Gloucestershire for the weekend. The pair referred to them as their 'M4 chats'.