Author Robert Jobson has opened up about an encounter he had with Prince Harry in 2009 after the Duke of Sussex made headlines after footage emerged of him using a racial slur
A royal commentator says he apologised to Prince Harry for how he referred to him. Robert Jobson says he was speaking to the Duke of Sussex after he was embroiled in a race row.
In 2009 footage emerged of Harry calling fellow Sandhurst cadet Ahmed Raza Khan “my little P*** friend”. The word is considered one of the most offensive to use when referring to people of South Asian origin.
Speaking on The Sun’s Royal Exclusive podcast, Jobson says Harry accused him of having a “secret camera” capturing him at the time. The author however admits he shot back, leading him to apologising to the prince.
He said: “I did the story about him when I was on the News of the World about him making a racist comment, it was a big splash at the time, against one of his Army colleagues when he was a cadet and he said to me, ‘Where’s your secret camera?’
“And I said, ‘With the greatest respect mate, it was your camera, your racist comment, and someone in your circle who obviously handed over the video.’ Which I had to apologise for and I did apologise, I apologised for calling him mate because he’s not my mate.”
Jobson went on to say Harry was “quite good” when they met on another occasion. He said: “I remember being on a plane with him, flying from New Zealand, and I’d just broken the story that he was quitting the Army and he was quite good actually.
“There were only a few of us on the trip and I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ And he said, ‘Well I’m going to try and really do a lot for guys with prosthetics’. He said, ‘But you’ll probably find out what I’m doing next before me’. He was always a bit chippy with me, but he’s okay.”
Harry addressed his comment in his explosive memoir Spare. He says the slur had been used by “lots of people” when he was growing up.
He wrote: “I didn’t know [it] was an insult. When I was little, I’d heard lots of people use that word and had never seen anyone scowl or seem upset, and I’d never considered those people to be racists.
“I was 21, I’d grown up isolated from the real world and surrounded by privileges, and I believed that word was like saying ‘Yankee’. Innocuous.”
Harry went on to explain that his father’s office decided to release a statement following the incident. He claimed he wanted to release his own, but was advised against it.
Harry explained that he reached out to his former colleague to apologise for the incident. He said: “I contacted him directly and asked for his forgiveness.
He said he knew I wasn’t a racist, that it was alright. But it wasn’t alright. And his forgiveness, his natural deference, only made me feel worse.”
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