Seven years ago, meeting Thomas Markle was not something I expected would lead to a lasting friendship, one that recently had me spending time by his hospital bed in the Philippines.

Our paths crossed in the chaotic days following his daughter Meghan’s marriage to Prince Harry in May 2018. At that time, I was working as the US editor for this publication and had approached him to discuss the family rift that began after he posed for paparazzi photos, suffered two heart attacks, and missed the opportunity to walk Meghan down the aisle. Unfortunately, this estrangement persists today.

Throughout my journalism career, I’ve interviewed countless individuals. Only a handful have become friends.

Tom is one of those few.

The last 11 days have been nothing short of a roller-coaster, both in his life and, surprisingly, in mine as well.

When he sent me a text on Wednesday December 3 telling me he was about to have his leg amputated after being hospitalised following a fall the previous day, I immediately called his son Thomas Jr, who lives with him in the Philippines, where they had moved to at the start of this year.

I was shocked to find that Tom had texted me the news from his hospital bed before telling his son.

Thomas Jr called his dad and immediately rang me back: ‘He really wants you to come. This is bad. Can you come?’

There was no doubt in my mind that I had to go. Thomas Jr called me back to say he’d spoken to the surgeon who said there was a massive blood clot in his father’s thigh and it was ‘life or death’.

Tom is 81 and has been in increasingly poor health for years. He’s one of my closest friends.

My decision to rush to the Philippines would backfire on me spectacularly last week when the full wrath of the Sussexes’ powerful PR team was aimed at me.

But more of that later.

When I first met Tom he was living in Rosarito, Mexico, a beach town near the border with California, where he had retired to seek ‘a quieter life’ after a 40-year career as an award-winning Hollywood lighting director.

Our paths would likely never have crossed had his youngest daughter Meghan, who made her name as a moderately successful actress in the TV show Suits, not met Prince Harry, married him, moved to the UK, rejected royal life, gone through Megxit and accused the Royal Family of racism during an infamous Oprah Winfrey interview.

Thomas Jr’s ex-wife Tracy gave me Tom’s number with his permission. He wanted to meet me because he was considering giving an interview to ‘reach out’ to Meghan who had ghosted him since the wedding. Tracy told him I was trustworthy and we should meet. And so I found myself sitting in Tom’s living room, his three Emmy awards proudly displayed on his mantelpiece alongside a graduation picture of Meghan.

He told me he’d been privately trying to reach Meghan, writing letters to both her and his ex-wife Doria, Meghan’s mother.

He’d tried to ring his daughter’s mobile phone only to find the number no longer worked.

He told me: ‘I just want someone to tell my story fairly. I don’t know how else to reach my daughter.’

A genuine friendship blossomed. Yesterday, as he lay in his hospital bed, he told me: ‘We’ve been through so much since then, haven’t we?’ We sure have.

In the early days he would drive up to Los Angeles once a month to pick up mail and go to the bank. We’d meet for dinner and chat about all sorts of things.

Meghan – and his pain over their estrangement – would invariably come up because it was a rift that haunted him every day.

He told me he thought he would die of a broken heart. But talk of Meghan faded as our friendship grew to the point where we spoke most days on the phone. I didn’t mention her name – even though it hovered like a dark cloud overhead – as that would have been picking at an open wound.

We talked mostly about movies, music and about his Hollywood career and the stars he worked with – like Demi Moore – on shows such as Married… With Children and General Hospital.

I knew little about ‘old’ Hollywood but Tom has an encyclopaedic knowledge and took delight in introducing me to the classic movies of Busby Berkeley, Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Stewart. He would ring me up and say: ‘I’ve just seen this and you’d love it.’ I kept a notebook by my bedside simply to jot down his recommendations.

As a Brit I never liked country music. Tom got me into Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. We share a passion for cats, too. Tom spent a fortune feeding the strays which gathered nightly on his patio. Once, I stopped counting at 50 animals.

From the start we had an agreement: everything we discussed was off the record unless he specifically said otherwise.

Last week, Meghan’s PR machine accused me of breaching ‘ethical boundaries’ by being by his bedside and reporting on him having his left leg amputated below the knee.

I feel it is important to set the record straight. I’ve only ever written stories with Tom’s express permission, and he told me he wanted to give an interview to The Mail on Sunday as he sought control of the narrative around his amputation. He’s been burned a lot by people on the internet making up stories. He also wanted to reach out ‘one last time’ to Meghan.

He is making good progress but is far from being out of the woods.

He said: ‘I don’t know if she realises how sick I am and that I might die. I want to do a story because I’m sure there is all sorts of made-up s*** on the internet.’

After last Sunday’s story came out I received a flurry of messages from one of her PR team. I found the tone unnecessarily aggressive and was so concerned I told him I would prefer that he dealt with my editor and the paper’s legal team.

I had other things to worry about – like looking after Tom whose life was hanging in the balance.

After publication of our interview, in which Tom said he wanted to see his daughter one last time before he died, Meghan’s spokesman issued a statement saying she had, in fact, already emailed him.

The problem is the Duchess sent it to an email address he hasn’t used in years. He had lost the password and had given up. Anyone who knows Tom knows he doesn’t like emails.

But he has kept the same phone number for at least two decades, saying he will never change it because he wants to make sure Meghan can always reach him.

Tom was baffled: ‘How can Meg say she doesn’t have my number? It’s the same one I’ve had for 20 years. She and Doria called it all the time.’

The Sussexes’ spokesman also claimed Meghan’s team had been calling around hospitals in the town of Cebu, where we were based, trying to find him.

Her father and I have discussed many times what would happen if she did reach out to him.

I have always said I would walk away from our friendship if it meant he could reconcile with her. Painful as that would be – and we both had tears in our eyes as we discussed it again last week – it would be impossible for him to reconcile with her while having a friend in the media, particularly one in the British Press, for which Prince Harry has repeatedly expressed his hatred.

When the Sussexes’ spokesman reached out to me, I wanted to do everything within my power to assist him. Tom did not have his phone with him in the intensive care unit. Thomas Jr was told hospital policy forbids them in the ICU so he had taken his dad’s phone home.

But the following day – Monday of last week – I arrived at the hospital to find Tom had been moved into a regular ward. I texted Thomas Jr, who said: ‘Should I bring dad’s phone?’ to which I immediately replied: ‘Yes!’

Tom arrived with it and the first thing I did was to send a WhatsApp message to Meghan’s spokesman – after first checking with Tom that this was OK.

I gave Tom’s phone number, the hospital name and even his room number. But no one called and, at the time of publication, still hasn’t.

The hospital has a blanket security ban in place to stop any paparazzi infiltrating his room. When Tom had a massive stroke in 2022 I was in his hospital room when a neighbour called to say a paparazzi was trying to enter his Mexican home. Tom had collapsed there and the man wanted to photograph scattered items on the floor and his half-eaten sandwich on the table.

But back to these past few days, which have been heartbreaking for Tom. He has lost a limb and while he has been very brave and made remarkable progress (I watched in awe last week as he started physiotherapy to build up his muscles) he is still processing the enormity of what has happened. And all the while, he has been waiting for Meghan to call.

For two days, he had his phone plugged in by his bedside.

He kept asking me to check it, just in case he’d missed something while he slept. I made it clear that if she called while I was there, I would immediately leave the room.

He is a proud man and a very brave one. It was a sad sight to see.

Then things got stranger.

On Monday afternoon, the assistant to the president of the hospital came into his room brandishing a one-page legal document headed: ‘Consent and Waiver for US Embassy Representative Visit.’

The document said that Tom ‘hereby request [sic] and allow a duly authorized representative of the US Embassy to visit me in my hospital room for consular assistance’. It went on to waive his legal rights to privacy (under Philippine laws hospitals cannot disclose the name of a patient to anyone) and added: ‘The visit is at the request of the US Embassy.’

After he signed and the assistant left, he said: ‘What do you think that was about? Who would get the US embassy involved? Do you think it’s Meghan and Harry?’

Moments later a consular official entered the room. When Tom asked who had called the embassy he said: ‘I’m sorry sir, I don’t know.’

He thrust another piece of paper in front of Tom headed with a US crest and the words: ‘Written consent to release of personal information under the privacy act.’

The official explained: ‘If somebody calls the embassy and asks about you, can you give the specific names of people the embassy is authorised to give details to?’

Tom gave four names: Prince Harry and Meghan, Thomas Jr, and me.

On Wednesday, Tom was in the middle of a physiotherapy session when the president of the hospital walked into the room with her lawyer with no warning.

I covered his amputated leg with a sheet to preserve his dignity. He was asked to sign yet another legal document to confirm that he was about to receive a letter from his daughter and that the letter was sealed and personally handed to him. The lawyer said the handover would be videoed so that the video could be sent to Meghan.

The whole thing felt surreal.

I offered to leave the room. Tom asked me to stay. Once the handover was complete – and duly taped for the Sussexes – he and I sat staring at each other.

The letter in its glaringly white envelope lay on his hospital bed. Tom was physically trembling at the sight of the letter, so I asked Tom whether I should move it.

I placed it out of his sight next to his uneaten lunch.

For four hours he fretted about opening the envelope. He was scared it might contain bad news.

He eventually opened it. Reading and re-reading it several times.

He shared nothing about the contents. I asked no questions.

I told him what I’ve told him so many times before. I hope this letter might start the reconciliation he longs for.

It still stuns me that he has never met his son-in-law Prince Harry, nor his grandchildren Archie, six, and Lilibet, four.

Tom asked me not to tell anyone he had received the letter. I swore secrecy and told no one.

But when I got back to my hotel room hours later and turned on my phone it blew up with messages from friends and other journalists saying the Sussexes had released the fact that Meghan’s letter was safely in his hands – and had laid into me.

Her people accused me of ‘breaching clear ethical boundaries’. Yet they released the fact that Meghan’s letter had been delivered to her father.

The whole thing feels hypocritical to me, but perhaps I’m just feeling the burn of being squarely in the Markle machine’s firing line.

The Sussexes’ statement to Reuters news agency said: ‘Given that a Daily Mail reporter has remained at her father’s bedside throughout, broadcasting each interaction and breaching clear ethical boundaries, it has been exceedingly difficult for the Duchess to contact her father privately, despite her efforts over the past several days. With the support of reliable and trusted contacts, her correspondence is now safely in his hands.’

I’m not going into what Mr Markle said when I told him this. All I can say is that their statement is demonstrably false.

I gave Meghan’s PR her dad’s number, hospital name and room number on Monday. The letter arrived on Wednesday.

Her people criticise me for jumping on a plane to be with my friend. To me, the lingering question is: ‘Why didn’t she do the same?’

She has all the resources in the world. Her father is a proud man but could use her help now more than at any time in his life.

I have only heard one side of the story and, as an impartial journalist, I know there are always two sides. I applaud Meghan for contacting her father. I truly hope her letter opens the door to a rapprochement.

I, for one, would be happy to give up a friendship that is the world to me if it means Tom gets back the one thing he has always wanted… Meghan.