By Eric King-
Paul Burrell, the former butler of Princess Diana is to marry his boyfriend next month, less than a year after divorcing his wife of 32 years. He has come out as being gay, after being married to his wife for 32 long years.
The 58-year-old father-of-two has apparently known he was gay all along but has now decided to come out. The man, despised by the Royal family for spilling secrets in two books in 2003 and 2006, divorced his wife Maria, 62, last year. He announced his divorce in the media, but no known reasons for the divorce is known.
The revelation that Burrell is gay was revealed to The Sun Newspaper, in what is his first public acknowledgement of being gay. Burrell has kept his true sexual orientation a secret for decades but says he trusted Princess Diana with that information, as she was the only one he could trust. The implication being that his wife of three decades may not have been aware of it either, or may have been aware very late.
It is strange and tantamount to leading a double life when a gay man marries a woman without her having any knowledge of his sexual preference. In modern day terms, we say a person who swings both ways is bi-sexual, but that appears to be an apologetic way of being confused about one’s sexuality. The option of being bi appears to be an excuse to explore the sexual arena without restrictions, whilst forcing the woman to tolerate the fact that the man may also swing a man’s way, and force the man to tolerate that his partner may swing a woman’s way. Plenty of criticism may be thrown at me for this view, but common sense suggests that a man who fancies both sexes should not get married to one of the sexes because he will always feel a missing hole from the other.
A man who is married to a woman for three decades who suddenly leaves her, and then gets married to a man a year later, appears confused to me. It may not have been as ridiculous if Burrell announced he was gay without adding to that news of marriage just a year after a divorce from a marriage of 32 years.
Mr Burrell’s two grown up sons Alexander, 27, and Nicholas, 24, who live in Florida with Maria, are expected to fly over to attend the wedding ceremony, which will be “circus-themed”, according to reports.
Mr Burrell was once a footman to Queen Elizabeth II and later Diana’s private butler for 10 years.
Burrell was accused of stealing items from the royal household but the trial fell apart last after the Queen remembered Mr Burrell told her he was safeguarding some of Princess Diana’s possessions