Prince William called Princess Diana because he was teased at school after topless photos of his mom were published in 1996, according to Vogue publisher Nicholas Coleridge.
In his new memoir, The Glossy Years, Coleridge wrote that Diana told him during a lunch conversation that her eldest son, William, then 14, had called her from his boarding school, Eton College, to tell her that his classmates were teasing him over the photos of Diana soaking up the sun on a balcony in Spain.
“William rang me from Eton. Poor boy, he’s only 14. He was upset. He said some of the other boys were teasing him, saying my tits are too small,” Diana told Coleridge about the incident in a preview of the book posted by The Times on Sunday, September 15.
Diana asked for Coleridge’s opinion of her decolletage and he recalled, “I became breathless, and went as red as a guardsman’s tunic.” However, he reassured her that her breasts were “perfect,” and “told her not to worry.”
“Thank you, Nicholas. I knew you’d tell me the truth,” Diana told Coleridge. “Thank you, I feel better now.”
In September 2012, William encountered a similar invasion of privacy by the paparazzi. While on vacation in the south of France with his wife, Duchess Kate, photographers snapped pics of the Duchess of Cambridge lounging topless wearing only a pair of bikini bottoms. One photo showed William rubbing suncream on his wife. While several publications declined to buy the intrusive photos, they were published in French Closer magazine.
William sued for invasion of privacy and a French court ordered the magazine and two of its staffers to pay the couple $226,000 in damages in 2017.
In a statement in 2012, St. James’ Palace said the incident was “reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to the Duke and Duchess for being so.”
Diana died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 after a high-speed chase between the paparazzi and her driver.
