Chapter 13
Boujis nights
Look but don’t touch, touch but don’t taste, taste but don’t swallow — rules are broken –
Boujis
It was a Tuesday evening in June and a frisson of excitement rippled through the beautiful crowd at Boujis nightclub in South Kensington. One of its most famous patrons had just been whisked through the club and down the stairs to the exclusive VIP room. The group of long-legged blondes on the small dance floor had flicked their glossy hair and pouted at the young celebrity as he made his way through the throng. The resident DJ played his favourite house track, Shakedown’s ‘At Night’, and Jake Parkinson-Smith, the club’s affable manager, had cleared the velvet-upholstered suite ahead of the royal party’s arrival. Parkinson-Smith has known both William and Harry for years and has a reputation for looking after his royal friends, who include the princes’ cousins Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. Harry’s favourite drinks, Belvedere vodka and cans of Red Bull, along with several bottles of Dom Perignon champagne, were already chilling in stainless-steel ice buckets.
Ahead of his arrival a team of protection officers had swept the room and taken seats at a discreet table, where they sat sipping Coke. The prince, dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt (like everyone else he had been asked to remove his baseball cap), jumped up onto the sofa, an impish grin on his excited face. ‘Let’s party,’ he shouted above the din, a £180 magnum of vodka held high above his distinctive crop of red hair.
Boujis DJ Sam Young has known the princes for a while. ‘The reason the boys come back time and time again is because they feel relaxed and in an environment they trust. Boujis is like a private house party. They even used to have their own barman called Gordon to look after them.’ Tables 11, 12 and 13, which are close to the VIP room, had also been cleared that night to ensure that there could be no snooping on the royal party – which was just as well because Harry was out with the one girl guaranteed to rile Chelsy Davy, who was at home in South Africa working hard for her finals.
Natalie Pinkham, a pretty TV presenter, was Harry’s date for the night. The twenty-nine-year-old had met the prince in 2001, when her then-boyfriend England rugby captain Matt Dawson introduced them at a match. With her impressive knowledge of sport and her ability to drink most grown men under the table, Natalie immediately hit it off with Harry. Natalie recalled their first meeting: ‘Matt introduced us and I looked after Harry with Clive Woodward’s wife Jane while we were in the stands, not that he really needed looking after. We just chatted to him and then Matthew and I became friends with him. I realised very quickly what a normal bloke he was. I was in my final year at university at this point and our friendship has continued since then.’ They stayed in touch, and Harry would send Natalie emails while she was cooking baked-bean suppers in her student hall at Nottingham University to the disbelief of her housemates. In December 2001 there were reports that Harry had sent her a thong for Christmas and that he ‘fancied her rotten’ despite the six-year age gap. ‘We get on well and have a lot of fun, but that’s as far as it went,’ Natalie told me.
The daughter of a barrister and property developer, Natalie is ambitious, good-looking, great fun and, much to her credit, fiercely protective of her friendship with Harry. On this particular occasion they were in the mood to party, and the champagne corks continued to pop as they danced and chatted in the dimly lit VIP room. When it came to closing time, Harry suggested continuing the party at Mark Dyer’s house. The army officer turned publican often allows his basement flat to be used as a party venue for Harry and his friends – much to the annoyance of the long-suffering protection officers, who have to wait patiently in their cars until their royal charge is ready to call it a night. At Dyer’s Harry can be himself, safe in the knowledge that what goes on inside those four walls stays there. The drink always flows freely, and good-looking girls are never in short supply.
By all accounts the evening had been a great deal of fun, but by 5 a.m. Natalie was ready for bed. As the prince escorted her to his waiting Range Rover, Natalie, a little unsteady on her feet after eight hours of drinking, begged Harry for a kiss goodnight. ‘Not here,’ he said before whisking her back down the steps. They emerged seconds later, blissfully unaware that their late-night encounter had been captured by a long lens. When the story hit the newspapers the next day, there was an awkward long-distance call to Chelsy in South Africa. It wasn’t the first time Harry had had to explain himself.
It was May 2006 and Harry was a month into his reconnaissance training with the Household Cavalry at Bovington in Dorset. Unlike Sandhurst, where he had been expected to adhere to a strict timetable, he had plenty of free time and on Fridays he couldn’t wait to get home to London and hit Boujis, where he was afforded VIP treatment – known at the club as the ‘royal comp’. Like William, Harry’s royal status guaranteed him free drinks as well as the company of an endless supply of gorgeous young women. Sadly for Chelsy, 2006 was a summer of rather tacky confessions.
First was the rather breathless account of Catherine Davies, a thirty-four-year-old mother of two who claimed she was seduced by the soldier prince at a house party in Fulham. ‘I was absolutely speechless. I was against the wall and he literally lifted me off the floor and gave me a lovely kiss which I was stunned by,’ she told the Mail on Sunday. Miss Davies was apparently not the only woman to succumb to the prince’s charms. That July he reportedly danced with a well-known page three girl and a masseuse who claimed the prince had kissed her on the lips at Boujis. The flurry of tabloid tales left Chelsy in tears and cast fresh doubts on their relationship. It was her best friend Kirsten Rogers, who Chelsy grew up with in Zimbabwe, who telephoned Harry to admonish him for being insensitive. When term finished, Chelsy flew to London to spend some time with Harry. They had not seen each other since their idyllic fortnight in South Africa that spring, and Chelsy was running up huge bills on her mobile phone talking to Harry. She had told her friends in South Africa that she was in the relationship for the long term but was worried about her boyfriend’s roving eye. Harry assured her that she was the one, and for the first time Charles gave his seal of approval, allowing Harry and Chelsy to share a room at Highgrove. They also rented a four-bedroom house just a fifteen-minute drive from his officers’ mess so that they could have some privacy.
If his indiscretions had put pressure on their relationship it didn’t show, and the couple were inseparable that summer. They went to London to see friends and partied at their favourite nightclubs. In July they attended the Cartier International Day, where high-profile guests paid £200 for the privilege of watching the young royal play polo for the Prince of Wales’s team. Harry did not leave Chelsy’s side, a stark contrast to the previous year, when I witnessed Harry and Guy Pelly dancing wildly on the tables in the Chinawhite marquee after the prince had scored the winning goal. Harry was in the mood to celebrate, and cigarette in one hand and vodka and cranberry in the other, he had been surrounded by a gaggle of pretty girls. This time he was with Chelsy, in a stunning off-the-shoulder chiffon dress, and on his best behaviour. At one point they escaped the crowds to share a hot dog in the car park.
Harry was calmer when Chelsy was around, and her positive influence had not escaped the notice of his father. When she flew home in August she was confident they could last the distance. Secretly they had hatched a plan for her to move to Britain, where she would enroll on a postgraduate course. It was not long and she promised she would be worth the wait. This time she had no need to worry about Harry getting up to no good. On the advice of the boys’ protection officers, Charles had told William and Harry to stay away from Boujis. There had been one too many headlines along the lines of THE BOOZE BROTHERS and they needed to keep a low profile. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were said to be concerned that the princes were becoming too well known for their late-night antics. While no one was suggesting they should live like monks, they were in the public eye and some decorum needed to be preserved.
With his military training due to end in October, Harry had to knuckle down to some serious work. Although the Household Cavalry is best known for its ceremonial presence at state occasions, one of the key reasons both Harry and later William chose to join the regiment is that it carries out front-line reconnaissance work. At the Royal Armoured Corps centre at Bovington Harry was acquiring the skills that would enable him to lead twelve men into a war zone, where his job would be to scout out enemy positions using Scimitar armoured vehicles.
It was the middle of August; Iraq and Afghanistan were both possible destinations, and there was a real chance that Harry would be flying out the following spring. ‘Harry has started preparing himself for war,’ I was told. ‘He expects to be sent to Afghanistan to join the rest of his regiment.’ The Ministry of Defence appeared to confirm the story: ‘There is a requirement for reconnaissance troops in Afghanistan and there is a squadron from the Blues and Royals there at the moment. However, the current regime is due to change next spring.’ But within weeks the prospects of Harry going to war looked unlikely. Senior sources in Harry’s regiment explained that sending the prince off to war was proving a nightmare. Every day there were fresh reports in the press about where Harry and his men would be posted thus endangering not only the prince’s safety but that of his men.
Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt was in the unenviable position of deciding Harry’s fate. There was a real risk if he sent the prince to war that Harry would be targeted by insurgents, and the Taliban were already baying for his blood. Extremist websites were offering bounties for Harry’s head. He was a trophy as far as the enemy was concerned, and for the top brass at home sending Harry to the front line was an enormous worry. The Taliban were stepping up their attacks: forty-one British service personnel had been killed in just five months and there were real fears that Harry could become another casualty. Southern Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world, and no place, some argued, for the third-in-line to the throne. Even if Harry was to be stationed at headquarters in Kandahar, he would still face daily rocket attacks. A troop of a hundred Household Cavalry had been deployed to Helmand that spring, and one man had been killed and five seriously injured when their Scimitar armoured vehicle hit a landmine during an operation near Musa Qaleh.
General Dannatt’s decision would not be made lightly; it carried so many ramifications for the royal family and the country as a whole if the worst happened. But what was the point of spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money sending William and Harry to Sandhurst if they would never have the opportunity to put their training into practice? As head of the armed forces and Harry’s commander-in-chief, the Queen had made it clear to senior officials at the Ministry of Defence that she would support a decision to send Harry to war, and the prince later acknowledged, ‘She was very pro my going.’ The Queen was proud of her grandson’s achievements and did not believe that his hard work should be wasted. As the spare, Harry was in a different position to his older brother and made his feelings clear: if he wasn’t going to be sent to war, he might as well hand in his uniform. His Uncle Andrew, the last royal to be sent to a conflict zone, had expressed similar sentiments in a BBC documentary in 1991: ‘Had I not gone to the Falklands my position within the navy would have been untenable.’
Harry had spent weeks training for battle at remote army stations around the UK. According to one officer who trained Harry on pre-deployment exercises at Castlemartin, the MoD’s 2,400-acre firing range on the south Pembrokeshire coast, he was an exemplary leader.
We did a lot of training just after Christmas, which involved firing with the Scimitars. We also did small-arms firing in Lydd down on the south coast and at Thetford, where we practised what we would be doing on the front line. Harry was very good and came across as a competent commander. He’s got a strong and confident personality and he has a very easy manner with the soldiers. Harry was taught about IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and mines. He and his troop had to experience being in the middle of a simulated explosion and Harry did well. He kept his nerve and led his men to safety. He also did cultural training, where he was briefed on the culture and language of the hostile territory he was being prepared for.
Harry’s favourite part was training in ‘minor aggro’. He was taught how to get himself and his troop out of a hostile situation, and how to fight his way out of an ambush. One of the exercises involved him being petrol-bombed. He was dressed in combat gear, a protective helmet and a riot shield, and had a petrol bomb thrown at his feet. He responded exactly as he should have done and stamped his feet hard on the ground so the petrol ran off him and he could kick the fire out.
On 21 February 2007, after weeks of speculation, Harry finally received the news he had been waiting for. He was to join the Household Cavalry’s A Squadron on a six-month tour of duty in Iraq that spring. The Ministry of Defence released a statement approved by Clarence House:
We can confirm today that Prince Harry will deploy to Iraq later this year in command of a troop from A Squadron of the Household Cavalry Regiment. While in Iraq, Cornet Wales will carry out a normal troop commander’s role involving leading a group of twelve men in four Scimitar armoured reconnaissance vehicles, each with a crew of three. The decision to deploy him has been a military one . . . The Royal Household has been consulted throughout.
Harry was finally going to war. It was to be the first time a senior member of the royal family had served on the front line since Prince Andrew had fought in the Falklands twenty-five years earlier. Harry was thrilled, and at the end of April Chelsy, who was travelling around South America on her gap year, flew back to London to accompany him at his sending-off party at Mahiki. That night Harry was on his best behaviour. Just a month earlier, having ignored his father’s instructions to stay away from his favourite night spot, he had been involved in an embarrassing scuffle outside Boujis. Flushed from drinking the club’s signature Crackbaby cocktails, the prince, who once again had been partying with Natalie Pinkham, lunged at a photographer before losing his footing and falling over in the gutter. It was a humiliating end to the evening. At the sending-off party it was clear that his impending deployment had had a sobering effect on the prince, who left the party with Chelsy shortly after midnight. Once again the roles were reversed, and it was William who was last on the dance floor until the early hours with his friend Holly Branson.
Harry was on a high but his elation was to be short-lived. Within weeks of the announcement there was a dramatic U-turn. On the evening of 16 May General Dannatt announced that the twenty-two-year-old prince would not be going to Iraq after all. It was simply too dangerous. Just weeks before, two men from the Queen’s Royal Lancers had been killed when their Scimitar vehicle was blown up while out on patrol in the desert. ‘There have been a number of specific threats — some reported and some not reported — which relate directly to Prince Harry as an individual,’ explained Dannatt, who had just returned from Iraq. ‘These threats expose not only him but also those around him to a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable. I have to add that a contributing factor to this increase in threat to Prince Harry has been the widespread knowledge and discussion of his deployment. It is a fact that this close scrutiny has exacerbated the situation and this is something that I wish to avoid in future.’
It had already been decided that Harry should lead a support troop doing deep desert patrols rather than reconnaissance, where he and his men would have been more exposed, but even being a part of a much larger force was seen as too risky. There had been too much speculation in the press about where Harry and A Squadron would be sent, and the Ministry of Defence had learned of plots to seize the prince and smuggle him across to Iran, where a rescue operation would have been near impossible. Abu Mujtaba, a commander in the Mahdi Army, the Shia militia loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told the Guardian newspaper, ‘One of our aims is to capture Harry; we have people inside the British bases to inform us on when he will arrive.’ A royal hostage crisis was something the Ministry of Defence was simply not prepared to risk. It was Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the prince’s private secretary, who informed Harry of the eleventh-hour decision. Publicly he put on a brave face, but it was enough to make him reassess his career.
Clarence House acknowledged that the prince was ‘very disappointed’ but insisted that he ‘fully understands and accepts General Dannatt’s difficult decision’. There is no doubt it was the toughest test of his commitment to his military career to date. Harry knew there was no guarantee this wouldn’t happen again. He had no intention of being a toy soldier and was incensed when the pressure group Republic described his training at Sandhurst as a ‘scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money’. If his military future was twiddling his thumbs in an office, he would rather quit the army now and do something worthwhile with his life. He had set up his own charity Sentebale to help children in Lesotho. If the military could not find a place for him, Harry would find another outlet for his passions and talent. As far as he was concerned, he had spent his whole life defending himself against accusations that he was little more than a playboy. Joining the army had given him the chance to prove his detractors wrong and show that there was much more to him.
Friends of the prince suggested it was no exaggeration to say that Harry slipped into a state of depression upon hearing the news. ‘Harry was devastated,’ an officer who had trained with him told me.
His soldiers ended up going to war without him, which was incredibly hard. He had spent months with his team getting them ready to go to war. He was 100 per cent focused and spent a lot of time with his men. To watch them going off would have been one of the hardest things for Harry. He’d done all his training, but he wasn’t allowed to go and do the job he’d been trained to do. It was very hard and we all felt sorry for him. He felt as though he was letting his men down by not going to Iraq with them. He saw them as his soldiers and he felt a huge sense of responsibility for them.
‘I have never seen Harry so down in the dumps,’ one of his best friends told me over a lunch at the Automat restaurant in Dover Street, just up the road from Mahiki. ‘His words are that he is absolutely gutted, he feels all his training has been a waste of time.’ Harry told his colleagues, ‘If I am not allowed to join my unit in a war zone, I will hand in my uniform.’ William, as always, was on hand to support his brother, but there was little comfort he could offer and he knew he would face a similar fate. As second-in-line to the throne, he realised that he too would have to watch his fellow officers go to war while he stayed at home. Harry joined his brother in D Squadron of the Blues and Royals until the MoD decided exactly what to do with him. His senior officers assured him they would exhaust every option to get him to war; in the meantime they told him to sit tight.
It was not surprising that Harry’s rebellious streak emerged again. If he couldn’t be a soldier prince he might as well be a party prince, and he hit his favourite nightclubs hard. PR DISASTER BUT HOPE OF SECRET ROLE FOR HARRY was the Evening Standard’s front page. Aware that he was fast losing interest, the MoD decided to send him to Canada. Harry had had several talks with General Dannatt and senior officials, who explained that he was going to be retrained as a battlefield air controller. It was, they explained, the easiest way to get him to the front line, but it needed to be done covertly. In May Harry flew to Alberta, to the British Army Training Unit in Suffield 160 miles south-east of Calgary, to spend three months learning how to carry out live-fire exercises. But within days of his arrival Harry was on the front page of a local newspaper, photographed in a provocative clinch with a waitress. He had gone to a late-night bar, with two of his bodyguards and a group of army colleagues to drink sambuca shots and rum and Coke. The worse for wear, Harry couldn’t resist chatting up one of the waitresses, an attractive twenty-two-year-old called Cherie Cymbalisty. ‘He was very forward and told me I was stunning,’ she recalled. ‘He certainly didn’t mention anything about having a girlfriend. He sure didn’t act like he had one.’
This time it wasn’t just Chelsy asking questions. Harry’s men were fighting in Iraq, and here was the third-in-line to the throne chatting up girls apparently without a care in the world. While one could forgive him for letting off steam, here was Harry acting the fool when the death toll of British servicemen in Afghanistan had just reached sixty. As his grandmother privately remarked, sometimes Harry just lacked common sense.