Michael Fawcett
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Michael Fawcett is a "close personal friend", and formerly the servant of Prince Charles of Great Britain. He resigned from his position in Prince Charles' inner circle in March 2003, after the report by Sir Michael Peat accusing him of selling gifts during his time working for the royal household, including a Rolex Daytona watch valued at £3500. Despite his official resignation, he still works freelance for the Prince as an organiser and in other roles. Former royal press officer Dickie Arbiter remarked of Fawcett, "Fawcett has been there for so many years, so close in times of stress, that he knows all the ins and outs and all the warts." [1]
He was thrust into the public eye again in November 2003 when George Smith, a valet working on Charles' staff, alleged that Fawcett had raped him some years earlier, and also that he had once happened upon Fawcett and the Prince sharing a bed one morning when delivering the Prince's breakfast.[2] Fawcett's innocence was widely protested by the whole of the British establishment, including most newspapers and royal commentators, but the (unsuccessful) legal action that Fawcett took out on The Guardian and The Mail on Sunday, and the speed and extent with which total censorship was placed upon any further coverage of the affair has given rise to conspiracy theories regarding the veracity of Smith's allegations. Furthermore, Smith died on August 24, 2005, to extreme lack of reaction from the British press, considering his possible significance. Fawcett is widely described by his employees as strict, and often bullying, but is often protected by the Prince, such as in an episode in 1998 in which various staff complained about Fawcett's bullying attitude. Fawcett resigned, but a week later he was re-instated even higher in the Prince's household, while those employees who had complained were "no longer with the Prince's staff". He has a son and a daughter from an early 1990s marriage to a royal housemaid.
