• Ex-royal butler Paul Burrell has cancer
  • He was a close friend of Princess Diana
  • Burrell hopes to share her secrets with William and Harry

He was one of Princess Diana's closest confidants: Paul Burrell still speaks fondly of his time as butler to the late royal, who called him her "rock."

Now Burrell has prostate cancer. And he wants to tell William and Harry his last secrets about their mother.

The ex-butler tells The Mirror: "I know some of it isn't pretty, but if I leave this place and go somewhere else they'll never know. I think they should know."

Paul Burrell wants to discuss Diana "before it's too late"

"Before it's too late," Burrell wants to tell the brothers "what they really should know," he explains, without elaborating.

This, he says, is what Diana would've wanted: "Paul, you must make this a priority. You must go and see my boys," Burrell believes Diana would say to him.

He explains that he spent "all those years" with Diana – in her happiest times, but also in her darkest.

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Burrell says he was "the only man she ever trusted," and he has never revealed her deepest secrets.

He also connected his planned conversation with William and Harry to a very specific hope: "Wouldn't it be wonderful to see the boys repair their relationship and to be back where they should be."

"There are things that happened in their mother's world, which they may not have no knowledge of... I want just to say the truth," he adds.

We'll see if Paul Burrell gets his dream of a day with the two quarrelling brothers. He'll soon undergo treatment for prostate cancer...

See more in the video above.