Prince Harry’s shocking admission and apology over racist slur before meeting Meghan

Prince Harry once said he was “bigoted” before meeting his wife, Meghan Markle, adding that he was “naive” about how her ethnicity would affect the public eye during their relationship.

Ahead of the release of his memoir, Spare, last year, the Duke of Sussex opened up about his behaviour to US broadcaster CBS.

He said: “I went into this incredibly naive. I had no idea the British press were so bigoted. Hell, I was probably bigoted before the relationship with Meghan.”

The interviewer, Anderson Cooper, then asked: “You think you were bigoted before the relationship with Meghan?”

To which Harry replied: “I don’t know. Put it this way, I didn’t see what I now see.”

He claimed that the incident, which took place in 2006 but became known in 2009 after a newspaper released the video and caused a media storm, happened after he used a racist slur which he thought was “harmless” after “many people” used it when he was growing up.

Harry wrote: “The video was shot by me. Killing time before our flight, messing around, I panned the group, gave a running commentary on each lad, and when I came to my fellow cadet and good friend Ahmed Raza Kahn, a Pakistani, I said: Ah, our little P*** friend…

“I didn’t know that P*** was a slur. Growing up, I’d heard many people use that word and never saw anyone flinch or cringe, never suspected them of being racist. Neither did I know anything about unconscious bias.

“I was twenty-one, awash in isolation and privilege, and if I thought anything about this word at all, I thought it was like Aussie. Harmless.”