PRINCESS Diana would still be alive today if she still had proper security, her bodyguard of six years insists.
Ken Wharfe told The Sun how three mistakes led to the beloved royal, 36, being killed in a horror car crash in Paris 27 years ago today.
And he revealed how he had urged Diana to keep her ring of steel Scotland Yard security team before her tragic death.
Diana, Egyptian film producer Dodi Fayed, 42, and Ritz security chief Henri Paul, who was driving, were killed in the 1997 crash.
The sole survivor of the crash was Dodi’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones.
Paul had been drinking before getting behind the wheel and was driving at a high speed when the car smashed into the 13th pillar of the Pont de l’Alma underpass.
Wharfe – who was Diana’s personal protection officer from 1997 until 1993 – insisted his former boss would still be alive if Rees-Jones had driven instead of intoxicated Paul.
He said Dodi was a “difficult person” and the decision over who drove would have been out of the security team’s hands.
Wharfe added: “Rees-Jones was plateaued out at the bottom of the pyramid, it was very difficult for him to say to others what you should do and what you shouldn’t do.
“The one thing that would have saved Diana’s life that night would have been if they’d kicked out the chauffeur and for Rees-Jones to have driven.
“He couldn’t do that, because he couldn’t speak to Dodi Fayed – he told him what to do.
“And that’s a shame, because had Rees-Jones taken that command, had he taken that decision to boot out Henri Paul, you and I would not having this discussion.”
Diana’s death sparked an outpouring of public grief from millions around the world who saw her as the People’s Princess.
And images of the smashed-up car sparked shockwaves globally.
Diana and Dodi intended to head a short distance to an apartment he owned off the Champs-Elysees from the Ritz hotel in the French capital.
But in a desperate bid to fool press outside, they decided to use two decoy cars to cover their tracks.
A Range Rover was posted outside the Ritz’s main entrance, with Dodi’s usual driver at the wheel.
Meanwhile, Dodi and Diana climbed into a hired jet-black armoured Mercedes at the back entrance.
Paul, who was four times the legal drinking limit in France, was drafted in from home to drive the couple – and is said to have earlier goaded media outside the hotel waiting to spot them.
A probe after the crash concluded he lost control of the car while driving at high speed, under the influence of both alcohol and prescription drugs.
But Wharfe argues the whole incident could have been avoided if Dodi and Diana’s security hadn’t excluded local police and treated the media as “the enemy”.
He said: “The security also failed because of their inexperience to involve the local police, to have a relationship with the assembled paparazzi.
“You cannot treat the paparazzi or the media as an enemy – that doesn’t work.
“Yes, they can be annoying – but actually not one of them was out to kill Diana, they were there to photograph her.
“So you needed a dialogue, you needed a relationship.
“My relationship working with the media was at times difficult, but most of the time enjoyable.
“I often referred to the media as my Dad’s Army, because they would always keep the princess alive, which they did.
“And so that was the failure of the Fayed security. And that’s a tragedy.”
Wharfe also believes that Diana could have been saved from such an early death if the late Queen had retained her Scotland Yard security.
Diana and Charles announced their separation in 1992, and the following year Wharfe decided to step down as her bodyguard.
Just weeks later, Diana decided to axe her entire team – but was not urged to maintain her protection.
Wharfe said: “Yes, Diana had run ins with the Queen occasionally, and other senior members of the royal family.
“But had the Queen insisted that Diana retain her Scotland Yard security, Diana would have accepted it.
“You cannot force security on somebody, they have to say ‘yes, I’ll take it’.
“But the fact that it wasn’t offered, this was her way of saying I want a new life.”
Dian’s decision to cut ties with her security team came just four weeks after Wharfe had implored her to keep them on.
Three weeks after he resigned, Diana asked him to visit her at Kensington Palace.
Wharfe added: “She said, ‘you’ve always been great with advice. If there’s one piece of advice you’d give me, what would it be?’
“I said look, I don’t know what you’re going to do, where you’re going to go.
“But you’re going to need us [Scotland Yard]. Even if you change your sex, you will always be Diana, Princess of Wales.
“So I said I urge you, I urge you, not to lose the Scotland Yard security because we have given you that freedom, we’ve broken rules to allow you to have the normality that you crave for, and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t continue, even with me gone.
“Four weeks later, she abandoned the entire security.”
KEN Wharfe revealed his personal relationship with princess as he spent six years working with her so closely.
Reflecting on Diana, Wharfe hailed her “wicked sense of humour” and said he felt “incredibly privileged” to have been part of her life.
He said: “I’ve always maintained that her popularity sort of changed the royal family in the way that it was perceived generally by the world, not just by the British people.
“Diana certainly had an amazing sense of duty, and that was to do the very best she could for the Queen.
“Nothing was ever sad about working for her [Diana].
“It was always a joyous moment, and I felt incredibly privileged to be part of that, even though I was working.”
Wharfe told how even when he first met her, she showed how down to earth she was.
He said: “As I walked into the room I was introduced and Diana said ‘I don’t envy you, Ken, looking after my kids. They can be a bloody nuisance’.
“And William was attempting to play piano turned around and said ‘no, we’re not a bloody nuisance. Then Harry fell off this table.
“And of course she gets up and says ‘come here both of you’ and chases them out of this room. And I hadn’t said anything.
“And then she came back in and she said ‘you see what I mean, Ken’.
“And suddenly, instead of you talking to a member of the royal family, you were actually speaking to somebody, a parent, a young mother, that you could identify with.
“That was my memory of Diana, certainly at the beginning, but it was the fun, the laughter, and the unhappiness also.”
