The Hollywood actress Shelley Winters was once lunching with an actress pal who wanted to pick her brains- she was penning her autobiography and was worried that she had led a fairly tame love life. "I 've had few affairs with stars" she said.
Winter's responded :"look, if they are gay or dead, just say you screwed them. None will complain"
***********************
The
Shuttle's eye was drawn to a tale that
swept the world yesterday. No-one yet has clocked it as an
April Fool's Joke. Such fine publications as the
Sydney Morning Herald and the
Daily Telegraph have faithfully repeated the tale verbatim.
Cleo Rocos who worked with the late British DJ
Kenny Everett says that one night in 1988, she, Kenny and the late
Freddie Mercury dressed
Princess Diana in military jacket and sun shades and they all went of to the South London gay pub the
Vauxhall Tavern where Diana was able to buy drinks with nary a punter spotting that the
Most Famous Woman On The Planet was in their midst :
“When we walked in . . . we felt she was obviously Princess Diana and
would be discovered at any minute. But people just seemed to blank her. The venue was packed, but the presence of Mercury, Everett and Rocos
helped divert attention and Diana was able to order drinks at the bar
before the group left,"
Such a sweet tale from Cleo's new tome : '
The Power of Positive Drinking".
In 1996
the
Shuttle spent a few days with Diana on her last trip to Australia for the
Victor Chang Institute, accompanying her to various events to document the visit, commissioned by her Aussie pal
Marie Sutton who had talked Diana into her last charity event before retiring from public life.
One night we were smuggled out of the
Ritz Carlton Hotel in Double Bay, all 3 of us crouched in the back seat of a car, to avoid the press. Diana was visiting the
St Vincent's Hospice to meet HIV patients. We were sworn to secrecy. She wanted no publicity. Diana sat and chatted to patients for over 5 hours. We took snaps of each patient with Diana as memento's.
 |
| Marie Sutton |
Driving back to the Ritz Carlton the driver took us via Oxford Street to show Diana the
Golden Mile of gay clubs. Diana commented that she visited gay AIDS patients around the world but had never been to a gay bar. Whilst she was still a Royal she said "
my detectives would have never let me enter one without it being searched for days beforehand. In fact going to any bar was out of the question".
Freddie Mercury died in 1991 from AIDS. From about 1987 he had become a recluse and was never seen again in public again . Kenny Everett was a regular at the Vauxhall Tavern but usually went unnoticed mainly as all the patrons more or less looked just like him. It was 'clones' pub.
Diana was finally divorced from
Prince Charles in 1996 and lost her Royal title and the privileges that came with it including 2 permanent detectives from the
Royal Protection Squad - the ones who "
would have never let me enter one (gay bar) ". In the year leading up to her Australian visit she spoke to Marie Sutton almost daily. She would relate the extraordinary lengths she would go to meet her lovers- the private houses of the Aristocracy where she could arrange a discreet visit for a weekend in privacy which she knew the Protection Squad would always vet. Perhaps they slipped up in the Vauxhall Tavern incident.
What a shame Diana's great pal
Sir Elton John hadn't joined this little pub crawl to confirm the tale.
Yesterday the movie premiered in New York with the same line-up. Our dear friends at the UK Daily Mail have indulged in the same fantasy that has gripped several local publications with this tale of Miranda Kerr & Packer supposedly meeting secretly in New York with Kerr going to great lengths to swap cars. Alas the tale is almost word for word for the April Fool's Joke we ran on April 1st this year. The fact the Mail excitedly contacted us for more details on the great non love affair of the year is entirely co-incidental. Below is a preview of the Packer Ratner flick.
