The royals - Kitty Kelley [205]
The monk recommended she spend time with some nuns in a convent in Bosnia. “They will teach you how to lead a celibate life,” he said.
Dismissing his stern advice, she turned to her friend Alistair McAlpine, who wrote about their private lunch: “She has often asked advice, thanked the giver profusely, but gone the way she wished in the first place. Perhaps she feels that those who give her advice will go away satisfied with just the honor of having had her ask. How terribly she misunderstands human nature.”
Sarah told Lord McAlpine that she wanted to divorce her husband. “He is so boring,” she said. “He only wants to play golf and watch science-fiction videos.”
Lord McAlpine advised her against divorce. “It was at this point she informed me the Princess of Wales had had it in mind to leave her husband on the same day but had decided to postpone that event for a month or two, in the Duchess’s words, ‘to see how I get on.’ ”
While Diana stayed on the bus, Sarah decided to hop off. But she said she was nervous about public reaction and the way she would be treated by the royal family. McAlpine explained, “She meant, of course, financially.”
Like a squirrel scampering to find nuts, John Bryan scurried in all directions trying to generate money for Sarah. He was never off the phone. Bombarding the media with proposals, he hawked her to the highest bidder: $25,000 for exclusive photo shoots, $50,000 to $200,000 for exclusive interviews. He dictated the rules to journalists: he provided the questions and demanded editorial control of the answers. When he negotiated a cover story with Harpers & Queen magazine, he insisted on their best fashion photographer, then demanded copyright to the photographs. “Do you know how many pictures she uses in a year?” he argued. “We send out a thousand, maybe two thousand pictures sometimes. She needs pictures for charity brochures, programs, book jackets, Christmas cards… She wants free and unencumbered use of the pictures for private purposes, to exploit them any way she wants to.”
In his demands the deal maker became as noisy and disruptive as a high-speed water bike roaring up the Thames. “Mr. Bryan had everyone curtsying and making tea,” recalled one frazzled editorial assistant. “He was remarkably quick to shout, ‘Ma’am, if you please,’ if one of us forgot for a moment to grovel to Her Royal Highness.”
Put off by his hustle, the magazine finally withdrew from negotiations because Sarah would not be interviewed. She wanted her picture featured on the glossy cover but did not want to submit to questions. She phoned the editor, Vicki Woods, to try to change her mind. Miss Woods later wrote that she was exhausted from the round of “hideous telephone calls” she had been receiving from John Bryan.
“Poor you,” Sarah told Miss Woods. “I know you think I just see myself as a celebrity… but I’m a serious person and I’m not doing this just so that I can get free Christmas cards or something….”
The editor told the Duchess she could make her own arrangements with the photographer, but the magazine could not pick up the tab without getting an interview from her. Sarah pleaded Palace protocol. She told the editor: “It’s always me who has to carry the can; it’s always me who gets the blame for this kind of thing; it’s always my fault, and I’ve had enough of it; that’s why I want out of the whole thing, so I can get on with my own life…. I’m so tired of carrying the can for all of them. I’ve been the scapegoat of the Waleses for the past four years.”
After the photo shoot, John Bryan called to taunt the editor about the pictures. “This is the hottest set of photos I’ve dealt with ever,” he said. “You really lost out…. We were only ever gonna [sic] do this in our style. She’s a goddamn pro. She’s not some dead, common, fucking trashy little model.”
Over the next sixteen months he jetted from New York to London to Paris, making deals for Her Royal Highness. He tried to sell her as a model, a writer, an ambassador. He courted publishers