The Duchess of Sussex’s former bodyguard has sprung to her defence after claims that she behaved like a “dictator in high heels”.

Meghan Markle at a conference in Austin (Image: Getty)

Meghan Markle’s ex-bodyguard has strongly defended the Duchess of Sussex after it was claimed she was branded “Duchess Difficult by staff members..

Steve Davies, who used to protect the Duchess, came to her defence after the comments surfaced earlier this year in a report from The Hollywood Reporter.

Mr Davies backed the 43-year-old mum-of-two star, saying: “She gets a bad rap for being a not very good person to work with, that she was this evil person in the Royal Family.”

He revealed that picked up a valuable life lesson from the former actress during his time working for her.

Mr Davies told InTouch: “I saw her, from working at the studio to working with charities to working with dog walkers and cleaners. There’s one huge lesson I learned from her: It’s give respect to get respect.”

Meghan Markle at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles Gala (Image: Getty)

The bodyguard, who first met Meghan in 2016, said she was being catapulted from being a well-known actress to a member of the Royal Family.

He said: “I felt sorry [for her] because she’d gone from being a celebrity to being a member of the biggest family in the world.

Mr Davies was hired when Meghan had first started dating Harry, while she was living in Toronto, Canada.

“It was stressful for her — all the publicity”, he revealed.

“We had people following us around everywhere we went. We had problems with drones, vehicles chasing us. It was a nightmare.

Meghan Markle speaks at an event in Colombia (Image: Getty)

After a couple of weeks of working with her, I said, ‘What do you really want to do?’ She said, ‘I’d love to be able to go and shop in a grocery store.’

“​​The previous security team wouldn’t let her do that. So I pushed the cart around the grocery store, and she was putting stuff in it. She really enjoyed that.”

He said he became so close to Meghan that he and his wife were even invited to her wedding.

“My wife and I got invited to the wedding, that’s how close we became,” he said, adding that they swap emails on birthdays and holidays.

“I would work with her again, not a problem at all. She was a good person to work for, and she still is a good person.”