November 1997, Johannesburg: the prince Harrythirteen years old, smiles embarrassed between Emma Bunton And Victoria Adamstwo of the most famous girls of the time, the Spice Girls. With them are also the others of the group, Melanie Brown, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Halliwell. Hers Her first trip abroad after her mother’s death Lady Diana, together with the father Carlowho wanted to take his youngest son with him on that royal tour.
Between the pages of Shoot the Duke of Sussex also recalled that meeting. Carlo – he explains – took him with him because there were mid-term holidays at school and he didn’t want him to stay at St. James’s Palace, where he would be alone because William was at Eton. “He was afraid they might take a picture of me through an open window or while playing with toy soldiers in the garden. She imagined reporters trying to talk to me by yelling questions: “Hey Harry, do you miss your mum?” The nation was in a state of hysterical mourning, but the hysteria of the press had turned into a psychosis,” recalls the prince. So they set off together.
Carlo allegedly met Nelson Mandela and also the Spice Girls. “Dad’s staff hoped that a photo next to the world’s most revered political leader and the most popular girl group on the planet would get them positive headlines – he certainly badly needed it. Since his mother’s disappearance he had been criticized with violence: he was being blamed for the divorce, then for everything that followed as well. His popularity in the world was dwindling.” recalls Harry, delighted at the chance to spend time with a father for whom «It was difficult to communicate, to listen, to express one’s feelings face to face.”
Contrary to what one might imagine, the encounter with the girls was not serene for Harry, he had everyone on him. “I would have preferred them all to disappear. I remember stepping onto the red carpet with a smile on my face and wishing I was in my bed at St James’s Palace,” the prince continues. “Next to me was Baby Spice wearing a pair of white plastic shoes with huge wedges. I stared at those shoes while she worked on my cheeks and kept pinching them. “How plump they are. How cute!”. Then Posh Spice arrived and she shook my hand. Further back I saw Ginger Spice, the only one of them I felt any connection with because she too was redheaded. Then she caused a stir over the Union Jack minidress she had recently sported (…) She and the other Spices cooed at me, saying things I didn’t understand and joking with reporters who were yelling, “Harry, here. Harry, Harry, how are you?” Questions that weren’t questions, but traps. They were thrown at me like cleavers. They didn’t care at all how I was, they just wanted me to say something thorny, again.
Then the concert, and the surprise at seeing the father moving his head and tapping time with his foot. In the end, once outside, a new awareness, the need to have close to that father who was struggling to express his feelings: “I reached out my hand, took his and held on. I remember that moment as clearly as the flashes. I loved him, I needed him».
Other Vanity Fair stories you may be interested in
- Prince Harry, worried about William and Kate’s younger children, the next Shoot
- Harry and that “made up story” about Major Hewitt (who is not his dad)
- Cressida Bonas and Chelsy Davy, as Prince Harry remembers (in Shoot) his ex-girlfriends
Source: Vanity Fair
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