Princess Diana’s ex-royal butler has revealed how he believes that it was Lady Di’s ghost who ‘sent’ his now-husband to him, after the pair met on a train.
Paul Burrell - who worked with Lady Di for a decade before her death - explained that he feels the late Royal sent his husband to him to ‘take care of me’. The 66-year-old said that he had a ‘sliding doors moment’ while on a train journey from Euston to Crewe in 2007, where he met now-husband Graham Cooper.
The pair locked eyes across the train carriage, quickly forming a rather unexpected romantic connection. At the time, Mr Burrell explained that he hadn’t officially come out as gay and had only recently returned to the UK after leaving his wife and two children in the USA.
Mr Burrell - who also served as the Queen’s footman - revealed that he and Princess Diana had an ‘understanding’ about his sexuality, despite him being married, to wife Maria Cosgrove, at the time. The pair had two sons, and were married from 1982 to 2016.
A year after his divorce, the former butler married Mr Cooper, 62, who he had met on a train back in 2007. When he was asked on the What If? podcast about how difficult it was to come out as gay, Mr Burrell said: "And one day, a sliding doors moment... I was on a train coming from London.
"Euston to Crewe. And on that train, down the other end of the carriage, was a man who smiled at me. That's all, I just looked down the aisle, and he smiled, and I thought 'Oo, what just happened then? Something happened'."
He continued: "So I didn't speak to him the whole journey, it's an hour and a half to Crewe, he started to get off at Crewe - got his briefcase down and a coat, and I thought 'Oh wow, what if he gets off the train and it's sliding doors and I'll never see him again in my life?'
"He walked towards me and I thought 'I'm going on to Chester, I'm not getting off here!'. And I thought 'What do I say, what do I say, think quick, think quick'. So I looked up at him as he passed me and I said 'Have you got a card?'.
"And he had the card in his hand, ready to leave on the table. He smiled again, and left the train. So I'm left with his number and a card. Now, what if? I think she [Princess Diana] sent him. Yes. To take care of me, yes."
In response to podcast host Lorraine Kelly's question of whether Diana knew he was gay, he said: "Oh Lorraine, Lorraine, I did fabulous flower arrangements, I chose the right dress for the right occasion, I knew which jewels and shoes, heels or no heels, stockings or no stockings, come on.
"Yeah. Yeah. We had an understanding, we had an understanding and so I was safe and she was safe. So it didn't matter in our world."
The former butler has previously said that he never revealed his true sexuality to Princess Diana, who died in 1997. Mr Burrell also spoke about how his marriage to Ms Cosgrove, with whom he has two sons, came to an end.
He said: "Maria gave me my two children, you know I still love her to this day. But things happened when Diana died, our world fell apart. And truths came to the surface, as often does after death and things, and a tragedy in a family.
"And I took my family out to the States, and thought I'd build them a new life so I built them a beautiful home, got them green cards, started their lives there. And I said look, I can't live in America. I can't, I'm British through and through. I've got to go home.
"So I said to my wife, 'Do you want to come back with me?' and she said 'No, I'd rather stay here' and both boys said the same, they want to stay in America so I came back alone, so I was lonely in England and I came back and didn't know what to do with myself."
This was, he said, when his 'sliding doors moment' with his now-husband happened.