Princess Diana’s former roommate said the only piece of advice the palace gave them about handling the press was to check for car bombs

• Princess Diana's former roommate said the palace gave them no guidance on how to handle the press.
• Virginia Clarke lived with Diana in London for two years before she married Prince Charles in 1981.
• Speaking at Diana's blue plaque unveiling, she said they were only advised to check for car bombs.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

A former roommate of Princess Diana said Buckingham Palace provided them with little guidance on how to deal with the hoards of press following their every move before Diana's royal engagement to Prince Charles, The Telegraph reported.

In a speech given during the unveiling of a blue plaque on Wednesday outside of Diana's old apartment at 60 Coleherne Court in Earls Court, London, Virginia Clarke said the only advice they ever got from the palace was to check underneath their own cars for bombs.

"Interestingly, none of us, including Diana, received any help," Clarke, who lived with Diana and two other women in the London apartment from 1979 to 1981, said. "I'm not sure who might have helped us, but there might have been someone. Some PR or palace person, I don't know."

"The only thing I remember being told was we should look under our cars for bombs," Clarke went on. "Sadly none of us had read the handbook for bomb spotting so we didn't know where to begin with that one."

At the time of the late Princess of Wales' engagement, Clarke, then going by her maiden name Pitman, was only 21, according to Tatler. She made it clear that none of her roommates, including Diana who was just 19 when she got engaged, had a clue on how to handle the sudden transition from ordinary life to one in the public eye.

Everything changed the day Diana met up with Prince Charles she said, according to The Telegraph.

"That was when we were joined by the world's press," Clarke said. "I think it's fair to say we had absolutely no idea how to handle them. They were professional, seasoned reporters who descended on us from everywhere."

"They were desperate for comments and photographs, looking through the windows," she said. "We used to call them by their full names. Always 'Mr' in some desperate attempt to put some distance between us. We thought if we were polite, we never lied - we just evaded the truth - and smiled, they would be gentle with us."

"Eventually we had to shut the curtains day and night and push through the crowds to get to work, and it was really intimidating," she added.

While the attention could be intimidating, Clarke revealed that Diana and her roommates enjoyed playing games with the press.

"We formed a team who together began to play this crazy game of avoiding the press," she said. "We thought it was really funny at the time, and Diana reveled in it."

Clarke said that time is when Diana "learned to play cat and mouse with press."

Later in the speech Clarke, who Tatler reports married a banker in a 1991 ceremony attended by the late princess, touched on her former roommate's life after her 1996 divorce.

"When she dropped her royal status, it saddened me to realize she no longer had her friends around her and the cat and mouse game became very lonely and not quite so funny."

However, she said Diana would've been "thrilled" to have her own blue plaque. According to English Heritage, the charity running the scheme, blue plaques in London symbolize a link between "people of the past with the buildings of the present."

"Those were happy days for all of us and the flat was always full of laughter," Clarke said, according to English Heritage. "Diana went off to become so much to so many. It's wonderful that her legacy will be remembered in this way."

Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.