Pub boss who Prince Harry branded a 'f***ing frog' says females would 'throw themselves' at royal

A pub manager who claimed Prince Harry branded him a ‘f***ing frog’ has told how female admirers would ‘throw themselves’ at the young Royal – and believes a ‘party girl in her mid-20s’ was the person he lost his virginity to in a field behind the pub. 

Franck Ortet ran The Rattlebone Inn near King Charles’ Highgrove home in Gloucestershire during the years when young princes Harry and William enjoyed wild drinking sessions there with friends.

Franck, who is French, famously banned Harry from the pub when he was 16 after the drunken young Royal got into a slanging match when he was refused alcohol and is said to have branded Franck a ‘f***ing frog’.

The Duke of Sussex recalled his teenage years in his memoirs ‘Spare’ and revealed how he lost his virginity to a horse-loving older woman who treated him ‘like a young stallion’ and slapped his bottom after they’d finished sex behind a pub.

‘I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away. One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us,’ he wrote.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Franck, 48, said: ‘Harry was never short of female admirers even though he was just a boy. He was a Royal prince so naturally women would be batting their eyelashes at him and William all the time.

‘Both boys were always very cautious around women in the pub, particularly as their protection officers would be watching on.’

Franck, originally from Biarritz in France but now living in Shropshire, explained that there was one woman he believes was the one who took Harry’s virginity.

He said: ‘There was one particular woman in her mid-20s who was close to Harry. She was a party girl, very attractive and very flirtatious with him.

‘I won’t name her but she was from their world socially, so she wasn’t intimidated by Harry or his status. I remember she shot him down once in the pub when he was trying to act big. She just turned to him and said “Oh do shut up Harry”.

‘They used to play drinking games together, one time they took it in turns to down a ‘snakebite and black’ a combination of lager, cider and blackcurrant. Afterwards this girl let out a huge burp.

‘She was a bit of a tomboy but lovely looking. A lot of men were fond of her.’

But despite Harry saying he feared he may have been spotted by locals as he had sex for the first time in a field behind a pub, Franck says he personally saw nothing: ‘ I never saw Harry so much as kiss a girl. He had a lot of attention but was always very careful with who he was seen with.’

He also addressed the question of whether the pub he ran was the one where the royal congress took place – widely believed by locals in the village of Sherston to this day.

Franck said: ‘The field at the back of the Rattlebone Inn would’ve been the perfect spot as back then there were no windows at the rear of the building and the grass in the field behind it was fairly long.’

Franck said Harry and William started going with friends to the Rattlebone in April 2000 while Harry was studying at Eton College in Berkshire.

He said the boys and their friends stayed for lock-ins about six or seven times.

Franck, who now lives in Shropshire and works as a computer salesman, said Harry may have been Royal but he behaved like any other loud 16-year-old kid.

Franck said: ‘Harry was a really nice kid to begin with. He was polite and friendly and unlike some of his friends, he wasn’t too pretentious.

‘He could poke fun at himself. He never bought the alcohol himself, but he would get drunk on pints of cider given to him by others.

He said Harry referred to him as ‘Froggie’ almost immediately. The Prince would swear at him and order him around.

‘To make it into a joke I made up a name for him and whenever he would go a bit too far I would say “Oi, shut up smelly Ginger”.

‘Perhaps it wasn’t very respectful, but he always fired the first shot.

‘One night I told him, William and his friends that the bar was closing and could they all leave.

‘William got up to go, but Harry stayed sitting down. He looked me in the eye and with a grin on his face said “make me”.

‘He was only 16 back then and a scrawny teenager and I’m 6ft3 so I shrugged, walked up to his table, lifted him up and carried him under my arm.

‘I kicked open the door and placed him outside and shouted “now get out of my pub”. At this point his police protection team were stood up, stunned, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

‘To be fair, I was half-joking and Harry took it in the spirit it was meant. He was giggling as I was throwing him out.

‘In the end I let him and the others stay for an extra half-hour. William told Harry when he returned to his seat “be careful with Franck, he’s French and remember what they did to their Royals!”

Franck says over time, Harry’s jovial manner changed and he became more dismissive and rude.

He added: ‘The last time I saw Harry, one Sunday evening, he came to the pub in with another boy, who I didn’t really like. I though was arrogant. I used to call him “Blondie” and when he first came in I asked him for ID because he looked so young. After that it was a standing joke that I would ask him to prove his age.

‘Harry sat by the pool table and was watching a match on the television while the friend came to the bar and ordered a couple of pints of lager.

‘I asked him for his ID like usual but that night he said, “Shut up and get on with your job”.

‘I told him not to talk to me like that and said I could refuse to serve him. It was the usual light-hearted banter, and he took the drinks and sat down with Harry. I could see the two of them whispering and Harry turned around and said “Oi Froggie, cheers” and raised his glass.

‘At first I dismissed it. Sometimes Harry would get drunk and say “Hey Froggie, get me a pint”, and “Come here Froggie”. At first I’d been a bit offended but then I laughed at it.

‘That evening he seemed sober but I wasn’t in the mood and he went too far.

He carried on calling me Froggie so I told him to shut up.

‘As he carried on calling me names I could see him turning his head to smile at his friends as though he was being really clever.

‘It looked like he was enjoying being the centre of attention. 

‘I’m sure he thought it was really funny but it annoyed me because everyone was laughing and I felt he was trying to humiliate me. I had to leave to stop myself saying something nasty. I went out of the bar to calm down and when I came back they’d gone. I felt offended that he’d made my customers laugh at me.’

‘I barred him and he never returned. In fact I’ve not seen him since.

It wasn’t the only time Harry got into hot water for racially abusing someone.

In his memoir, the duke recalled the time he had to apologise after footage emerged of him describing Sandhurst colleague Ahmed Raza Khan as ‘our little p*** friend’

He said he had used the term without malice after the recording, taken in 2006, was leaked three years later.

Harry said he contacted Ahmed directly and apologised. He said his comrade told him he knew he was not racist and that ‘nothing happened’.

However the Duke wrote that ‘it did happen’ and that his friend’s forgiveness only made him feel worse.

In his book, due to be released in Britain next week, Harry blamed his brother and The Duchess of Cambridge for him wearing an infamous Nazi fancy dress costume to a party in 2005.

He claimed he was considering either the Nazi uniform or a pilot’s outfit to a ‘Native and Colonial’ themed event and called his brother and sister-in-law for their opinion.

Harry wrote: ‘I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said.

‘They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.’