A memorable romance. Catherine Ommanney detailed the fling she claimed to have with Prince Harry when he was 21 and she was 34.
“We had some mutual friends in the property business and he introduced himself,” the Real Housewives of D.C. alum, 50, told The Sun in an interview published on Saturday, November 26, explaining how she met the Duke of Sussex, 38, in May 2006 at Art Bar in London. “Harry was wearing an Australian-style hat that made me laugh, so I asked him, ‘What are you doing looking like a twat in that?’ I don’t think he was used to people taking the mickey, and once we started talking, it was like there was no one else was in the room.”
The former Bravo personality explained that she decided to open up about the alleged affair because she didn’t think her brief relationship with Harry would make it into his upcoming memoir, Spare. “I doubt I will be in Harry’s book, as a prince can’t run off with a 34-year-old mother of two,” she told the outlet. “It’s just not the done thing.”
After leaving Art Bar, Ommanney claimed that the duo went to a friend’s house, where the Invictus Games founder made her a bacon sandwich. “We started play fighting and I think we were wrestling on and off for about 15 minutes when I told him I needed to go home,” she recalled of the alleged encounter. “It was then that he lifted me by my waist off the floor and held me against the wall. He gave me the most incredible, passionate kiss I have ever had in my life.”
The former reality star claimed that she and Harry went on a few more dates, but they stopped seeing each other after their romance made headlines. Ommanney didn’t see him again until 2009 when they had a chance encounter at a polo match held in Barbados.
“Without being arrogant, I think we both quite fancied each other even though he was way too young for me,” she said, adding that she nicknamed him “Baby” because he liked lollipops. “If he wasn’t a royal and was maybe 10 years older, he would be my perfect man.” Harry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The former Housewife married Charles Ommanney in 2008, moving to Washington, D.C. with him from her native England. The duo called it quits in 2010, with Charles saying that he deeply regretted participating in RHODC.
“In a way, I was naive and foolish to sign off on doing this,” he told The New York Times in August 2010. “But, at the end of the day, it was innocent. I wanted happiness for someone I was in love with. I put all my reservations aside and said: ‘Go for it. Do it if it makes you happy.’ Then I regretted it. I lost touch with everyone, and mix that with my marriage falling apart and the show taking over, it was very sad.”
Harry, for his part, was linked to Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas before he married Meghan Markle in May 2018. The duo share son Archie, 3, and daughter Lilibet, 17 months.
His memoir, announced last year, is due out on January 10, 2023. “Harry has been working hard to strike a balance that will hopefully minimize the fallout caused by this book,” an insider told Us Weekly earlier this month. “It’s been a very rough process. And very difficult for him to recount certain traumatic events from his childhood.”
