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The prime minister told me that her royal highness would be announcing that she was withdrawing from public life and
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she had been asked who she'd like to spend the day with while this was going on and she prime minister said he
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thought someone should be with her. She paid me the great honor of choosing me. I then went on ahead of her to the
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Hilton Hotel. The head of the Ford Motor Company was coming to support a charity,
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a very important charity was trying to convince young people, trying to convince us all to wear helmets when we
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were on bicycles. The audience, about a thousand people, thought she's about to talk about these
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helmets and why it's important for children to have them. When I started my public life 12 years ago, I understood
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the media might be interested in what I did. I realized then their attention would inevitably focus on both our
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private and public lives. But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention
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would become, nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life in a
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manner that's been hard to bear. At the end of this year, when I've completed my
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diary of official engagements, I will be reducing the extent of the public life I've led so
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far. And they were just stunned. I mean, a lot of people in tears. We took her out of the room to be
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greeted by the largest array of journalists I've ever and photographers I've ever seen in my life or will ever
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see again and sent her home back to St. James's Palace. I was a bit shocked myself. And when I returned, I spoke to
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the ambassador. He said, "Thank God she didn't stay. She'd have never got out of
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the room.