Princess Diana presents prizes for a lifeguard competition during the Central Coast Surf Carnival at Terrigal Beach in Sydney, Australia, in 1988.
Princess Diana is remembered for her grace and compassion, but she also had a wild side, based on new revelations that she reportedly partied in drag at a gay club with legendary pop star Freddie Mercury.
In a new book, The Power of Positive Drinking, British actress Cleo Rocos claims that Diana donned a military jacket, dark sunglasses and policeman’s hat while accompanying the flamboyant Queen frontman to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in south London in the late 1980s. Rocos was also apparently on the clandestine excursion along with her comedian co-star Kenny Everett.
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“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 reveals in extracts printed in the Sunday Times, adding that the future mother of Princes William and Harry looked like a “rather eccentrically dressed gay male model.â€
Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 aged 36, became a hero to many in the gay community when she was filmed holding hands and comforting AIDS patients, an act that was shocking to some people at the time. Mercury died of AIDS-related pneumonia himself in 1991.
The Princess of Wales was famous for her fun-loving personality that endeared herself to the British public but caused friction with her stuffy royal in-laws. She was rumored to have visited notorious London jazz club Ronnie Scotts on numerous occasions while disguised by a brunette wig.
In 1986, Diana and her future sister-in-law Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson turned up at London nightclub Annabel’s wearing police uniforms with two friends. They apparently planned to gatecrash Prince Andrew’s bachelor party that was going on elsewhere that same evening before having second thoughts.
“For a moment it must have seemed like a police raid, then guests obviously decided they were ‘kiss-o-gram’ girls,†the club’s manager told the AP. “One of the staff told them that one or even two ‘kiss-o-gram’ girls might be all right but four of them was a bit of an embarrassment to others.â€
PHOTOS: The life of Princess Diana
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/04/02/princess-diana-reportedly-partied-at-gay-club-with-freddie-mercury/
