Meet the cameraman UK royals hated

The world’s press will train their lenses on Britain’s new royal baby next month, but after a career spent snapping the family in the most unflattering light, Ray Bellisario will happily leave them to it.
“When there’s a royal wedding, or like now there’s going to be a royal baby, I bugger off,” the photographer says. “I’ve never had an interest in them. It was just bread and butter for me.”
Dubbed London’s first paparazzo — a term he hates — Bellisario was a constant presence at royal events in the 1960s and 70s, taking candid and often embarrassing shots of Queen Elizabeth II and her family.
The royals tried just about everything to get rid of him short of sending him to the Tower of London. The palace blocked his access to royal engagements, complained to the press watchdog, successfully instructed editors not to use his pictures and even took him to court.
Now aged 77, Bellisario says he has few regrets about his work on the royals, which paved the way for the kind of off-guard, up-close shots beloved of today’s celebrity magazines. “Let’s get real — they love it. Without it, where the hell would they be?” he said. These days Bellisario makes frequent trips to Cuba to teach journalism at the University of Havana and, since a spinal condition put him in a wheelchair 27 years ago, campaigns for disability rights.
But, resplendent in a cerise suit, pink shirt and peach tie, he shared some of his exploits with AFP over coffee in London ahead of an auction of his work in September.
Among the estimated 20,000 transparencies is one looking up the queen’s dress as she sat by the lake at Sunninghill Park in Windsor with her sister, Princess Margaret, who was wearing a bathing suit.
He had gone searching for Margaret, but was quite surprised when the picture of the queen was exposed in the dark room. “That was purely accidental — I was absolutely amazed,” he says, laughing.
The shots of Margaret prompted the monarch to complain to the Press Council, the then-media watchdog, which in 1964 strongly condemned Bellisario for taking pictures in a private area.
Buckingham Palace had previously taken Bellisario to court for shooting pictures of Princess Anne, the queen’s daughter, and he was fined for breaching a local by-law.
Although he was subsequently blacklisted by most British newspapers, Bellisario refused to give up and says he knew foreign publications would always want his work.
The royals’ actions were like a red rag to a bull. “It was the worst thing they could have done,” he recalls.
He makes no secret of his dislike of the royal family, describing the queen as “that damn woman.” “They irritated me first by their presence,” he says.