Butler to
Diana, Princess of Wales until her death in
1997. Diana insisted that he stay in her service after she and
Prince Charles were divorced, and described him as her 'rock', ostensibly for the
moral support he gave her during the break-up of her marriage.
This record was qualification enough to get him installed as the
etiquette columnist of the
Daily Mail, the upmarket
tabloid no self-respecting Di-adorer would be seen without. In
2002, Burrell finally made it into the annals of
royal scandal on his own account when allegations that he had made off with various personal effects of Diana's after she died resulted in a saga worthy of
Gilbert and Sullivan.
Among the 310 items Burrell was accused of stealing were several dozen of Lady Di's CDs, demonstrating her impeccable taste in all matters
Chris de Burgh and
Elton John, two photograph albums of
Prince William in the bath, the Princes' letters to 'Mummy', a foot-high porcelain
kingfisher and other such
ephemera. And this was just the list the public were allowed to know about: the
Crown, who managed to be
prosecution and victim at the same time (don't you just love the
British constitution?), prevailed upon the judge to allow the
jury to read certain lists of
exhibits to themselves so that the press wouldn't get their paws on the
gory details.
Even
Mrs Justice Rafferty eventually had enough, and allowed the fact that
Diana's sister had asked police to search his home for a
signet ring given to Diana by her former lover
James Hewitt, of
Squidgygate fame, to be presented in open court.
The trial was already on its second jury - the first had been dismissed after a few days for unexplained reasons - when intervention by
the Queen got Burrell acquitted: she had supposedly suddenly remembered, on her way to a
memorial service for the victims of the
Bali bombing, that Burrell had told her in
1998 that he was looking after some of the items on the charge sheet, a revelation the prosecution had tried to cover up with a
Public Interest Immunity certificate in three days of legal argument.
Some criticism, naturally, centred on the
police, when it transpired one of the investigating detectives hadn't taken a look around Burrell's
loft, where he'd been accused of stashing the items, because she was
afraid of heights. As the tabloids gleefully splashed on their
front pages, police had also suggested to Charles and the boys that Burrell had been
dressing up in Diana's gowns.
The
Labour MP
Paul Flynn, however, wondered aloud whether
Buckingham Palace had cut a deal with Burrell in order to prevent him letting slip even more sensitive information. In which case, they'd need to have been very thick-skinned at the Palace indeed to put up with him selling his story to the
Daily Mirror to the tune of £300,000.
Less than a week after the trial had fallen to pieces, all manner of new Dianagates had emerged via the
Mirror, ranging from the highly plausible (Charles' irascibility with the servants at
Kensington Palace) to the
Jackie Collins-esque (the night Diana left the palace clad only in a
fur coat to visit her
heart surgeon lover, and Burrell's excursions to buy porn for Wills) and the disturbing (an accusation of male rape made by another servant against a man still in Charles' service). Diana's mother,
Lady Frances Shand Kydd, broke off contact with her daughter (or so we hear) after a heated telephone conversation in which Lady S-K complained about Di's fascination with 'Muslim males'. (
Apropos of nothing: the Shand Kydd pile in
Scotland was burgled while she was testifying at the
Old Bailey.)
Meanwhile, the tabloids who hadn't secured his signature retaliated with their own intrusions into Burrell's personal life,
The News of the World even managing to link him to disgraced TV presenter
Michael Barrymore. Believe everything you read, and the royal palaces would come to resemble the front row of a
Liza Minelli concert at the
YMCA.
In early December, the
florist's shop Burrell operates as a sideline in his home town of
Holt, in
Cheshire, was torched by persons unknown. Seeing how badly the fire at
Windsor Castle affected the Queen, it probably wouldn't be kind to wonder if any of her palaces are missing a
petrol can.
Ben Elton, appearing on
Question Time during the
furore, was asked by a
perspicacious audience member whether he yet had enough material for a fifth
Blackadder; the two of them ought to be splitting the
advances now. The publicity surrounding Burrell made it impossible to continue with the trial of another butler,
Harold Brown, accused of selling off a model
dhow presented to Diana by the Emir of
Bahrain.
Outraging the
republicans, throwing the
monarchists on to the defensive, titillating the
Lady Di fan club and massively entertaining those of us who can't go past a
monarchy the way some people can't go past a
train wreck, the Burrell case raises - in the eyes of liberal worthies at
The Guardian and such like - serious concerns about the
privileges of the Crown in today's British society. As indeed it does. But dammit, we want to know about Di's letters from
Prince Philip and whether Burrell has the
skinny on why Hewitt and
Prince Harry look so alike.
Thanks to amnesiac for an extra Dianagate...