21-05-2025
Inside Princess Diana's secret night out with Freddie Mercury - from her 'male drag' disguise to visiting the most famous gay bar in London
Princess Diana was one of the most photographed women in the world.
So it is no surprise that she went above and beyond to break free from the intrusive lens of the paparazzi.
The late Princess of Wales once disguised herself as a 'rather eccentrically dressed male model' to sneak into one of London 's most famous gay bars, according to a new biography excerpted by People Magazine.
In Dianaworld: An Obsession, which is to be released by Penguin on May 8, author Edward White describes the night Diana joined TV personality Cleo Rocos and Queen frontman Freddie Mercury at the apartment of radio DJ Kenny Everett to watch Golden Girls.
But later in the evening, as Rocos confirms in her own memoir, Diana persuaded the group to take her to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern - a Grade II listed entertainment venue in London that still hosts weekly cabaret drag acts.
Although Everett warned the royal that the club was 'not for you... full of hairy gay men', Diana was apparently insistent and promised she 'just wanted the thrill of going in, undetected, to order one drink, and would then leave right away'.
In order to do so, the princess borrowed Everett's clothes to 'disguise herself in male drag'.
'A camouflage army jacket, hair tucked up into a leather cap and dark aviator sunglasses,' Rocos wrote in her 1988 autobiography The Power of Positive Drinking.
'Scrutinising her in the half-light we decided that the most famous icon of the modern world might just... JUST, pass for a rather eccentrically dressed gay male model.'
The haphazard disguise seemed to work with Rocos describing the night out as 'fabulously outrageous' and 'bizarrely exciting'.
'No one, absolutely no one, recognised Diana,' she wrote.
As promised, Diana only ordered one drink before leaving the venue, making sure to send Everett his clothes upon her return to Kensington Palace the following day.
'The story sounds far-fetched,' White admits in his new book. 'Like one of the many apocryphal yarns of royal transformation that litter folklore and fairytales.
'Equally, Diana at the gay bar could be said to have a Shakespearean quality, with a girl dressed as a boy slipping into an enchanted world.
'Irrespective of its veracity, the story of Diana in drag at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern has been taken up as an illustration of her connection with the gay community and a metaphor for her own search for a family in which she felt truly accepted.'
In 2017, cabaret performer Desmond O'Connor wrote a musical called Royal Vauxhall based on the infamous tale of Diana's night out.
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London still hosts cabaret nights
Its performance coincided with the 20th anniversary of Diana's death and came at a time when a string of famous London gay venues were going out of business - including the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
White writes: 'It struck O'Connor as a powerful theme that united Diana's life with the experiences of London's gay community: both needed places to go where they could be themselves.
'Diana may have had the luxurious residences of Kensington Palace, Highgrove, and Althorp at her disposal but, Royal Vauxhall contends, each of them was a gilded cage where only her material needs could be fully met.
'It was in the guise of a different person that, for at least one night, she could discover herself.'
There is a long list of tales about Diana disguising herself to go unnoticed by the paparazzi.
Indeed, the late Princess of Wales allegedly accompanied Hasnat Khan, the British Pakistani surgeon she dated between 1995 and 1997, to Ronnie Scott's jazz bar in Soho while wearing a wig and glasses.
'She'd wear a wig as a disguise and in the gloomy atmosphere of the club no one noticed her', said Simon Cooke, the managing director of the club.
In her book Diana: Her Last Love, author Kate Snell said that the princess would often dress in disguise to avoid public recognition while dating the doctor.
Snell tells of the time her close friend and psychic healer Simone Simons was too stunned to speak when Diana appeared in the drawing room of Kensington Palace wearing a 'long dark brown wig recently acquired on her behalf by her butler Paul Burrell from the Oxford Street department store, Selfridges.'
'It was one of several wigs Diana had adapted for herself, and such disguises became key to going out with Khan, safe from detection by public and paparazzi,' wrote Snell.
In the 2017 documentary Diana: The Woman Inside, Simmons would also go on to reveal that the princess would wear disguises in order go shopping without attracting attention.
'In spite of the media putting her in the spotlight, she put on her wig, wore what she wanted, came for walks on Hampstead Heath, went to the charity shop with me in Camden High Street,' Simmons told the documentary crew.
'One time she was experimenting and this person answered the door to me, walked me up the stairs into the small lounge and William and Harry were there, and she said "the princess will see you now," and the boys just could not stop she said "I fooled you!"'
