‘When Whitney Houston laid her head on my shoulder, I was tempted to give up everything’, bodyguard recalls

David Roberts, ex-British cop and bodyguard to the late music legend, Whitney Houston, has shared some of his experiences working for the late singer.

In an interview with MailOnline, Roberts recalled the day the late singer rested her head on his shoulder and he was tempted to take the relationship further.

Roberts who inspired Kevin Costner’s character in The Bodyguard said it took all his professionalism not to capitulate to the desires she was feeling for the music star.

Houston was to later record the hit song: I Will Always Love You’ which was used as the soundtrack of the hit movie.

The softly spoken Robert, still has strong feelings for the late Houston, who died aged just 48 from an overdose in 2012.

He served as her main protection through what was the most high-profile period of her life, 1988-1995.

There was no real-life romance between him and his late boss but he is honest enough to confess in his memoir, Protecting Whitney, that he came close to breaking with professionalism to have a relationship with her on the evening she laid her head on her shoulder.

He told MailOnline that in spite of his affections, he was also clear-eyed enough to know the boundaries.

‘As a close protection officer, I was absolutely focused on keeping her safe. If you cross that line, you lose your objectivity and that makes it dangerous for the person you’re protecting.

‘That was why Frank Farmer [Costner’s character in the film] and Rachel Marron [Houston] couldn’t be together – he crossed the line and that was the end of him in the capacity of what he was employed to do.’

The Bodyguard starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner is a story of a former United States Secret Service agent turned bodyguard who is hired to protect a famous actress and singer

Roberts adds: ‘Much of what was contained in the film, she and I actually lived through. Little details such as the character Rachel Marron holding on to the back of his shirt to escape crowds of fans. That was how we did it.’

He disclosed further that the name Rachel Marron was also the name he used to book Houston into hotels.

As for the sweet note the pop star sent him, he says that came several years before she would record the song I Will Always Love You.

‘It was [on] a Post-it note and she [Houston] pushed it under the door of my room at the Regency Hotel in Hong Kong in 1988. I still have it – it’s rather faded with time, but still precious to me,’ says Roberts who spoke to MailOnline from his home in Florida.

Emotions aside, Roberts, now aged 73, remains something of a tough guy. He still has a prominent scar on his head after defending Houston during a fight between her brother, Michael, and a gang of racist thugs in Kentucky.

Brought up in Holyhead, Wales, he first worked as a police officer before becoming a sergeant in the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department of Scotland Yard.

He also spent time in Northern Ireland, later training as a sniper, and was involved in the Iranian embassy siege in 1980 in London.

Four years later, he started his own private security business. Accustomed to protecting diplomats and CEOs, Roberts wasn’t keen when first asked to be the bodyguard to Houston in 1988.

The American Embassy in London, who he’d worked for before, approached him to ask if he’d look after the singer, who would be on the British leg of her Moment Of Truth tour.

At the time, Houston was the most famous pop star on the planet – yet Roberts felt the task was frivolous, and that Houston would surely be spoiled and difficult. In the event, he was wrong on both counts.

When he first met the singer at Heathrow, after she had disembarked from her flight on Concorde, he found Houston to be ‘gracious, shy, introverted, well-mannered and one of the most beautiful women I had ever met’.

He quickly realised it would be a momentous challenge to protect the then 23-year-old with the mesmerising three-octave voice from the scores of threats being made against her.

There were many potentially deadly stalkers and ‘crazies’, including several at large in the UK, he recalls.

‘The most worrying seemed to be a man of former military experience based in Wolverhampton who had reportedly planned to take Whitney and their [imagined] children to heaven,’ Roberts says.

The man was kept under surveillance and failed to make good his threat. Roberts was certainly kept busy by other fanatics, though.

One disturbed aficionado in Australia sent Houston letters, expressing a determination to take the singer to ‘meet his dead mother and they would live forever as a family’.

Eventually, Roberts’s ‘deranged fans list’ grew to 50 names, compiled from people who had written frankly chilling messages to Houston. Some believed they were married to the pop star, others wanted to be married to her.

‘Some women believed they were her twin sister, that they had been separated at birth and this was the time for them to reunite,’ recalls Roberts.

‘Other women followed themes of hatred, wanting to cause harm, including the removal of body parts.’ Another troubled individual, he remembers, thought Houston had given birth to their son Little Charlie.

He and the police even confronted another violent fan in the mobile home where he lived in Canada where the authorities found illegal firearms, knives, detailed plans of venues and residences, and evidence that he planned to kidnap Mariah Carey, as well as Houston.

A particularly unsavoury incident happened on the 1991 I’m Your Baby Tonight tour when a known stalker was in the audience in New England, US, one evening and was being kept under surveillance.

‘Unfortunately, the chap was able to get in because he had a ticket so no one could stop him, but we were right there and keeping an eye on him when he suddenly stood up, pulled his clothes off and started pleasuring himself and shouting about Lucifer and Satan.

‘He was ejected. Whitney was unaware of what happened because his seat was off to the side of the stage.’