Thomas Markle failed to attend his daughter Meghan Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry in May 2018 after he was revealed to have struck a deal with paparazzi to have pictures taken before the event. In an explosive Channel 5 documentary, Mr Markle insisted he did not agree to the photoshoot to earn money but rather to change public perception of himself before heading to the UK for Meghan and Harry’s wedding. Speaking in the programme Thomas Markle: My Story, the father of the Duchess of Sussex said: “I had been going through this for months. Every paper seemed to want to make me look like a dumb fat slob.

“I bought a new toilet, it became news around the world and I was made a joke that this was my throne.

“I got approached by a photographer who spoke to me and said, ‘I can change your image.’ He said, ‘the problem you have is these pictures make you look terrible, they make you look awful. I can make you look respectable.’

“He said, ‘we’ll go out and take some photographs of you. This will look like you’re getting in shape for the wedding.’ The idea was these would all be candid shots, discreet, no one would know they were posed or anything.”

Speaking from his home in northwest Mexico, Mr Markle claimed he acted on the directions of the paparazzi through the whole photoshoot despite feeling “hokey” about the situation.

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He continued: “They would be just me doing my routine, daily. There’s a hill and he said, ‘run up that hill’ – I have a bad knee so I said, ‘I can’t run up the hill,’ so I’m sort of limping up the hill, holding two weights.

“Then we went to a coffee shop and he gave me this British book. He said, ‘Go and read the book, I’ll be outside taking pictures through the window.’ He wanted me to go to a wedding place so I could be measured.

“I was feeling that this was very hokey and hammy but he kept saying, ‘you’ve got to trust me, I’ve done this many times.’ He said, ‘you’re going to love it and they’re going to love you’.”

The scheme was later unveiled after the Daily Mail acquired footage from one of the locations of the photoshoot showing the paparazzi directing Mr Markle.

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He added: “The unfortunate thing is that every store has a video camera and apparently the Mail went into the computer cafe and checked it out and they bought the video from the store.

“Me posing for photos and cashing it, it came out that way. I didn’t do it for money, I did it to change my image.”

Mr Markle however admitted he still profited from the sale of those paparazzi pictures as his contact with the photographers awarded him “30 percent of sales.”

The father of the Duchess of Sussex was expected to walk her down the aisle of St George’s Chapel during the wedding ceremony but after the pictures were releases he chose not to attend the ceremony and stay home.

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Prince Charles stepped up and offered to escort his future daughter-in-law, smiling as he walked a radiant Meghan to a giddy prince Harry.

Meghan Markle and her father are believed not to have been in contact with each other since Thomas Markle released a private letter the Duchess wrote to him to the press.

The Duchess of Sussex has since temporarily relocated to Canada with the Duke of Sussex and their eight-month-old son Archie after the couple confirmed they would step down from their roles as “senior” working royals.

Following at least two meetings with the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William, Meghan and Harry were announced to have agreed to stop representing the Royal Family altogether and seek “financial independence.”

Prince Harry attended his last public engagement on Monday before flying to Vancouver Island to reunite with Meghan and Archie after a week spent apart.

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