It has been almost 28 years since Earl Charles Spencer discovered his sister, the late Princess Diana, had passed away.
Despite the time that has since passed, the 60-year-old says he still struggles to accept that she is no longer by his side.
The late Princess of Wales died in the early hours of August 31, 1997, after a horrific road accident in a tunnel in Paris.
Speaking as a panellist on Loose Men during Mental Awareness Week in mid-May, Charles made the heartbreaking admission about his older sister, describing her passing as a “great loss.”
“It’s such an amputation,” he said while live on air.
“You grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they’re with you forever – and then they’re gone.”
Born three years apart, they shared a close bond growing up. While he adores his older sisters Lady Jane Fellowes, 68 and Lady Sarah McCorquodale, 70, he said he lost a part of his childhood when Diana died.
“I don’t share my childhood with anyone anymore. That’s a great loss that you can never really put right,” he said, adding that the death of a sibling was an “extraordinary pain”.
“For years after Diana died, I would think, ‘I must ring her and tell her something,’ because we shared the same sense of humour. You just realise, of course, that’s not going to happen.”
Their closeness meant he also felt protective of her, especially when she was thrust into the spotlight and under the scrutiny of the press.
“I remember just before she died, a female journalist wrote a really horrendous article, because by that stage I don’t think that journalist was thinking of Diana as a person, she was something to make money off or whatever, and I wrote to her in outrage… I think particularly as a brother of a sister, you always feel like you want to get stuck in really,” he explained to the other panellists.
He also echoed these sentiments during the eulogy at her funeral.
“She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don’t think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling,” he said at the time.
“My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this: a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.”
