Princess Diana’s evening out at a homosexual bar with Freddie Mercury is making headlines once more as a brand new e book recounts the late royal’s escape from the palace wearing male drag.
The story is one in every of many enmeshed in Diana’s mythology dissected in “Dianaworld: An Obsession” (out Tuesday) by biographer Edward White, who cites actress Cleo Rocos’ 2013 memoir for proof of the princess’ wild London evening.
In “The Power of Positive Drinking,” Rocos claimed that the she, alongside together with her good friend Kenny Everett and Mercury, disguised the late Princess of Wales in drag so she might go to one in every of London’s hottest homosexual bars, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
The journey allegedly occurred in 1988 after Rocos, the princess, the Queen frontman and Everett spent a day “drinking champagne in front of reruns of ‘The Golden Girls’ with the sound turned down” so they might improvise dialogue with “a much naughtier storyline.”
When Diana — “in full mischief mode” — realized of her pals’ plans to go to a homosexual bar that night, she insisted on going.
Rocos and Everett tried to dissuade her, with Everett telling Di that the bar was “not for you ” and “full of hairy gay men.” The princess was intransigent. Mercury then supposedly chimed in with, “Go on, let the girl have some fun,” and the matter was settled.
Everett determined that, if the present should go on, he would disguise Di in drag: “a camouflage army jacket, hair tucked up into a leather cap and dark aviator sunglasses.”
“Scrutinizing her in the half-light we decided that the most famous icon of the modern world might just . . . JUST, pass for a rather eccentrically dressed gay male model,” Rocos recalled. “She did look like a beautiful young man.”
Because the group “inched through the leather throngs and thongs” on the Royal Vauxhall, Diana’s pals had been terrified the ruse would collapse.
“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. She sort of disappeared. But she loved it,” Rocos remembered.
“We were nudging each other like naughty schoolchildren. Diana and Freddie were giggling… Once the transaction was completed, we looked at one another, united in our triumphant quest. We did it!”
Per Rocos, the princess despatched Everett’s garments again to him the next morning with a be aware: “We must do it again!”
The story has been disputed by Mercury’s former assistant and good friend Peter Freestone, nevertheless.
“No, not at all,” Freestone replied when requested by Categorical On-line in 2019 whether or not the evening out ever passed off. “Maybe Diana went with Kenny but Freddie wasn’t there. He never met her.”
As White wrote in his new e book, Diana’s journey to a London homosexual bar with Freddie Mercury “sounds far-fetched, like one of the many apocryphal yarns of royal transformation that litter folklore and fairytales.” But, it additionally suits with Diana’s documented penchant for escaping royal life undercover so she might expertise the broader world.
“[T]here are other, slightly less fantastical, tales about Diana disguising herself on nights out, such as when she accompanied Hasnat Khan to Ronnie Scott’s jazz bar in Soho, the princess obscuring her true self beneath a wig and glasses,” White emphasised.
Apocryphal or not, the story — which impressed the cabaret musical, “Royal Vauxhall” — “has been taken up as an illustration of her connection with the gay community and a metaphor for her own search for a family in which she felt truly accepted,” White added.
