The royals - Kitty Kelley [166]
She had accompanied Prince Charles to a benefit at Covent Garden for London’s Royal Opera House. During the intermission, she excused herself. Leaving him alone in the royal box, she quietly slipped backstage to prepare a surprise.
When the curtain went up, a reed slim blonde twirled from the wings to center stage in a slinky white satin slip with spaghetti straps. People gasped audibly when they recognized the dancer, who was swaying to the pop music of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”:
Uptown girl,
She’s been living in her white bread world
For as long as anyone with hot blood can
And now she’s looking for a downtown man.
In her white satin heels, the Princess of Wales (five feet ten) towered over her partner (five feet two), Wayne Sleep. The royal ballet dancer, who was in the Guinness Book of Records for making more scissor-legged leaps than Nijinsky, was hardly noticed. All eyes were riveted on Diana.
She had secretly rehearsed the routine in Kensington Palace as a Christmas present for her husband. She presented it to him in front of 2,600 people who had never seen royalty slink seductively across a stage.
“The Prince nearly fell out of his chair,” recalled Sleep, “especially when she did the kicks over my head…. That kick routine brought the house down…. I could not believe how good she was. She was so confident and so sure of herself that she even curtsied to the royal box.” Sleep gathered her up in his arms and carried her off stage. “I was the one who was nervous,” he said, “knowing that I was holding the future Queen of England.”
Roaring approval, the audience gave the pop Princess a standing ovation. Then they gave her eight curtain calls, and she took her bows, looked directly at her husband, and smiled. And she wanted to do an encore. “I said no,” said Sleep, “because they would start nitpicking. She’s a good dancer, but she isn’t a professional. She started to do it again, and I had to drag her off. She loved it.”
Diana returned to the stage months later to make a video of herself dancing to the theme song of Phantom of the Opera. After seeing the Andrew Lloyd Webber show six times, she told the manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre in London that she wanted to be filmed dancing to the love song “All I Ask of You.” She said it was to be a gift for her husband’s birthday. Because it was a request from the Princess of Wales for the Prince, the theater manager agreed to make the stage and orchestra available to her. She admitted later that the video was never intended for Charles but, rather, for her own private use.
She did not object when the official photographer for the Opera House sold his pictures of her daring dance with Wayne Sleep for thousands of dollars. “It was the sexiest performance I’d ever seen at Covent Garden,” said the photographer.
Unfortunately, the Prince, who had stood up to applaud his wife publicly, berated her in private for flaunting herself in an undignified manner. He rejected her gift of dance as a narcissistic exhibition and said it was just another one of her ploys to upstage him. He took no pride in her talent. Instead he felt humiliated and consoled himself in the comforting arms of his mistress.
FIFTEEN
Sarah Ferguson was one patient we never wanted to lay eyes on again. She was obnoxious—rude, demanding, and coarse,” said Stephen Maitin, a London practitioner of homeopathy. “A few months before her wedding, she came to our Victoria Street clinic to be treated for obesity. She was brought in by her wedding dress designer, who was frantic to get her in shape.