AS the most famous princess of her generation Diana was used to posing for photos - but this was a modelling gig with a difference.

The Princess of Wales was once smuggled into a gay bar dressed as a male model, British newspaper The Sun reports. Her chaperone was the Queen frontman Freddie Mercury and the stunt was done so she could mix incognito with fellow drinkers.

The newspaper said the claim was made in a memoir by British comedienne Cleo Rocos, who says she accompanied the princess - who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 - along with Mercury and fellow comedian Kenny Everet to the bar during the 1980s.

Rocos says they dressed Diana in an army jacket, cap and sunglasses for a night out at the bar the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, in South London.

"Freddie told her we were going to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a notorious gay bar in London. Diana said she had never heard of it and said she'd like to come," says Rocos.

"Now this was not a good idea. 'It's not for you,' said Kenny, 'it's full of hairy gay men. Sometimes there are fights outside.' This didn't put her off in the slightest.

"When we walked in... we felt she was obviously Princess Diana and would be discovered at any minute.

"But people seemed to blank her. She sort of disappeared but she loved it."