The Duke of Sussex included no identifiable details in his book about the woman who took his virginity, friends insisted yesterday, after a 40-year-old digger driver revealed that she was the woman in question.
Sasha Walpole, a mother-of-two, said Prince Harry could have warned her that he was going to describe the five-minute, “wham bam” liaison in his memoir, Spare.
She said she found out he had described the “inglorious episode” moment via a WhatsApp message from a friend, which left her reeling having kept it a secret for 21 years.
She admitted it was “surreal” to have finally been exposed and said that “panic” set in, prompting her to seek legal advice.
“I don’t understand why he went into such detail,” she said. “He could have said he lost his virginity and left it at that. But he described how it happened – in a field behind a pub.
“That’s fine if you’re not the other person involved. But if you’re me, then you suddenly feel as if your world is getting a little bit smaller.”
However, a friend of the Duke’s told The Telegraph he had not included “any identifiable details” about his former friend in the book.
Ms Walpole, who sold her story to two national newspapers, said she would never have spoken out if the Duke had not exposed her, adding: “He has brought it to my door by writing about it.”
In a joint interview with The Sun and the Mail on Sunday, she said: “It is his story, and he’s entitled to write what he wants. He didn’t name me but people who were there that night, or simply part of that social circle, would be able to work out it was me.
“Possibly, Harry could have thought about that before publishing. He could have found me if he had tried.”
The Duke was 16 at the time and Ms Walpole was 18, turning 19 the following day.
He described her in the book as an “older woman”, sparking a global guessing game about her identity.
“She liked horses, quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion,” he wrote.
“Quick ride, after which she’d smacked my rump and sent me off to graze. Among the many things about it that were wrong: It happened in a grassy field behind a busy pub.”
Ms Walpole said: “I didn’t invite any of this attention, but I know the hunt would have kept going until people found me.
“Panic cut in. I live in a quiet area and it got to the stage when a strange car drove by, I’d think, ‘Is this it?’ I worried that I’d wake up one morning and find a barrage of cameras outside my house.”
She said that so many friends knew it was her that she felt she had to “take control of the situation before it took control of me”.
The incident took place at The Vine Tree pub in Norton, Wiltshire, on July 21, 2001.
Prince Harry, then an Eton schoolboy, had got to know Ms Walpole, an assistant groom at Highgrove, the King’s Gloucestershire home, two-and-a-half years earlier.
Their group of teenage friends attended the same polo matches and hunt balls and often socialised in the local pubs or at Club H, Harry and William’s basement den at Highgrove.
That night, Ms Walpole invited Harry to the pub to celebrate her 19th birthday.
The Prince gave her a stuffed Miss Piggy toy he had won at Thorpe Park earlier that day, and a comedy birthday card.
He bought 10 shots, which they shared before he asked if she wanted to go outside to smoke.
She recalled: “He started to kiss me. It was passionate, intense. We both knew. It went from a kiss on to the floor pretty quickly.
“It was instant, fiery, wham bam, between two friends. We didn’t set out to do it – it wasn’t premeditated and I didn’t know he was a virgin. There were no virgin vibes – he seemed to know what he was doing. We were both drunk. It wouldn’t have happened if we weren’t.”
She said it lasted “about five minutes”.
Ms Walpole admitted giving the Prince a smack on the bottom.
“(We were part of) a massive horse scene and the slap happened in a horsey context, the book is a funny interpretation of that,” she added. “His description is accurate – the real shock when I saw what he’d written was how true it was. I’m not offended.”
The pair separated as they returned to the pub to avoid detection but Ms Walpole had to go back to the field the following day to retrieve her belt.
Despite their friendship, she revealed that she had not seen nor heard from Prince Harry since that night.
Meanwhile, actor Rupert Everett has claimed that Prince Harry did not lose his virginity that night but in another country, teasing in an interview with The Telegraph that he knew the identity of the woman in question.
“I’m just putting it out there that I know,” he said.
Source: yahoo news
