Princess Diana Was Very Strict With Her Sons, Says Former Bodyguard Ken Wharfe

Prince Harry has always had a reputation as being less than observant when it comes to the rules, often being described by the British press as being the “cheeky” one – which is of course much more polite than saying “rude” or “disobedient.” But at least once as a young boy, he quickly found out that his mother, Princess Diana, wasn’t going to brook him being impolite in public – a lesson he learned when his mother gave him a “clip ’round the ear,” as her former butler describes it.

As Yahoo Finance reports, Ken Wharfe has been spilling the beans of late about what life was like for the former Princess of Wales and her two young sons all these decades ago, as well as giving his thoughts on how the now-grown Prince Harry should handle Meghan’s family (long story short: “freeze them out”). And in a recent interview, Wharfe spoke of the time he witnessed Harry’s mother resort to corporal punishment when young Harry acted up in public.

To set the scene: as you know, Princess Diana always made it a point to give her boys as “normal” a life as possible. It was utterly shocking to the royals at the time, but it’s a tradition that Prince William is continuing with his own children.

My favourite photo of Princess Diana with her boys ???#PrincessDiana #princewilliam #PrinceHarry #DukeOfCambridge #DukeofSussex #Family pic.twitter.com/EIV61qh1lz

— Lucie Klarnerová (@luckaklarnerova) August 22, 2018

To that end, one day Diana, Harry, William, Wharfe, and a “couple of others,” as Wharfe describes them (likely bodyguards), went out to get a taste for London’s public transportation. First, they took a ride on the subway (the “Tube,” as Londoners call it), and then they decided to go for a ride on the bus.

It was at this point that the young princes learned a lesson about London’s cultural diversity. Their bus driver that day was a Sikh (a practitioner of an ancient Indian religion) who was wearing his turban. When Diana instructed both boys to say “Thank you” to the driver, both did. But Harry took things a step further; listen to how he describes it in the clip below.

Prince of Wales or not, his rudeness got him the back of his mother’s hand, showing that even royal kids sometimes need their behavior put on the right track (and no, the Inquisitr will neither condone nor condemn corporal punishment, since we are not a parenting publication).

So far, Prince William and Princess Kate have been less than forthcoming about how they raise their own children (considering that it’s a private matter and all). But can you imagine Prince William being cheeky and his mother having to correct him?

“Future King of England or not, I will not hesitate to put your kingly bum in timeout!”

But if the way Princess Diana raised her sons in any indication, it’s not unlikely that they don’t tolerate public rudeness out of their kids.