Among the bitter family feuds and fall outs with friends and staff, it seems British photographer Misan Harriman is one of the few to have remained a long-term member of Meghan Markle’s inner circle.
The Duchess of Sussex has spoken glowingly of Harriman as her ‘dear friend’ and has entrusted him to capture a series of important milestones in her life with Prince Harry.
Yet can reveal that not all of Harriman’s relationships have been quite so enduring.
Harriman, who is also a ‘social activist’ and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, once teamed up in an unlikely partnership with tennis legend Boris Becker.
After starting out in a career in the City, Harriman, 47, went into business with the former Wimbledon Champion.
Their friendship even led to Becker, 57, playing a role in launching Meghan into the international spotlight when he helped secure her first platform – addressing a One Young World conference in Dublin in 2014.
But their relationship came to an end before Becker’s life spectacularly unravelled when he was declared bankrupt owing £50million – then jailed for two-and-a-half years in 2022 for hiding £2.5million in assets to avoid paying debts.
Now we can reveal for the first time the bizarre inside story of the unfortunate business association between the German tennis star and the acclaimed photographer, who in September 2020 became the first black person in the 104-year history of British Vogue to shoot its front cover.
Speaking for the first time of the relationship, Becker told : ‘He did work for me for two years.
‘You part ways with your partners because things have not professionally worked out the way we wanted.’
Becker added: ‘I had two directors in my company, he was one of the directors. He had a business card with Becker private office, and director was his title.’
Harriman, who attended Meghan and Harry’s wedding in 2018, was famously behind the photograph which the couple used to announce that the duchess was pregnant with her second child.
In February 2021, they shared news of baby Lilibet’s impending birth with an image of the couple in California which was ‘directed’ remotely by Harriman from his home in London.
Despite only taking up photography in 2017 after his Swedish wife Camilla bought him a camera for his 40th birthday, Harriman has gone on to become a favourite with A-list celebrities.
They include Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett while he has also become known for documenting Extinction Rebellion and anti-Trump protests as well as the Black Lives Matter movement.
But before all that, Harriman, who also describes himself as an entrepreneur, went into business with Becker who he started working for after they met in around 2010.
The pair are understood to have been introduced by a mutual acquaintance.
The privately-educated photographer became a director of Becker’s marketing company when the former tennis star was attempting to expand his personal brand.
They set up office at an exclusive private members space in one of London’s most prestigious locations in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square.
In 2013 Tatler magazine told how the pair were often seen making their way to private members club 5 Hertford Street quoting Harriman as saying: ‘I’m like the other woman in his marriage.’
Becker is said to have introduced Harriman – who also ran his own headhunting company from the office – to business contacts in the capital.
The pair were photographed along with Becker’s then wife Lilly at a charity event at the Serpentine Lido in Hyde Park – the only time when they were known to have been pictured in public together.
Author Tom Bower told how Becker helped secure an invite for Meghan at the One Young World conference after Harriman intervened on her behalf.
Writing in Revenge, his biography of Meghan published in 2022, he said Meghan ‘lobbied hard’ to be invited and asked Harriman for ‘a favour’ to secure her ‘first platform’ hoping that her appeal in Hollywood would be enhanced by philanthropy and activism.
He said Harriman asked Becker, who was due to make an address, if he could get a slot for Meghan.
Becker went on to introduce Meghan to his agent, Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne, a South African whose job was to negotiate appearances by famous people in conferences, s and campaigns.
Bower said the agent was well placed to ask conference organiser Kate Robertson to give Meghan a slot and the actress used her time to speak to the world’s media about gender equality and ‘positive change’.
Nelthorpe-Cowne told Bower that Meghan’s ‘obvious purpose’ in Dublin was ‘to promote her profile, increase her income and become influential’.
It was not long after, that Becker and Harriman’s relationship ended.
The reasons are not entirely clear but Becker denied reports that he lost millions of pounds of his fortune investing in the Nigerian oil and gas sector.
He said: ‘It’s absolutely not correct. I’ve never invested £1 in any oil and gas venture.’
One of Becker’s lawyers told a hearing the tennis legend was ‘not a sophisticated individual when it comes to finances’ – while one of Harriman’s multiple companies was in debt to to the tune of more than £625,000 in 2023.
Since they parted company, Becker and Harriman’s lives have followed dramatically different paths.
Becker was once estimated to be worth more than £100million after a glittering career which saw him win the first of his six major titles aged just 17 at Wimbledon.
After retiring from tennis in 1999, he commentated at Wimbledon for the BBC and turned his hand to coaching, working with Novak Djokovic.
Becker moved to London in 2012, and his bankruptcy stemmed from an unpaid loan of more than £3million on a luxury estate in Mallorca, Spain.
His financial woes were compounded by disastrous business ventures along with two divorces and a paternity settlement with Angela Ermakova – the Russian model who had his baby after a very brief encounter in a London restaurant.
Becker went on to spend eight months behind bars – serving time in HMP Wandsworth before being transferred to a lower category prison in Oxfordshire.
It was only last May that his bankruptcy officially ended and he has been back in the limelight this month after appearing as a contestant in Netflix’s reality show Celebrity Bear Hunt.
But he was hit with more misfortune when he slipped and tore his meniscus early on in the competition, prompting him to have surgery.
Meanwhile, Harriman’s photographic career has gone from strength to strength – despite him appearing to have less success with his business ventures.
In 2016, he founded What We Seee, a ‘curated platform for enriching film, music, poetry and art’, which according to accounts filed in March 2023, was just over £625,000 in debt.
Latest micro accounts filed up to March 2024 showed net liabilities stood at just over £156,000 while the firm’s website – whatweseee.com – is no longer accessible.
The firm’s mission is to ‘feed the world a digital 5-a-day’ and to ‘be a source of culture, curated to nourish the mind, mood and mental wellbeing’, according to its LinkedIn page.
The business has a significant loan from the Big Ideas Group, a London-based venture capital firm.
A brokerage company Harriman co-ran, Billionaire 500, was struck off by Companies House in 2019. Its last accounts showed it was £75,000 in debt.
Harriman’s most recent venture, media firm Culture 3, was set up in May 2022.
The firm’s website says its mission is to ‘harness the immense power of brands to create a better future for all’.
Its first set of accounts, covering 13 months to the end of May 2023, showed it was nearly £21,000 in debt.
Harriman also jointly controls a company called Clarion Media Limited with his wife.
The company has reserves of £37,000, down from just over £109,000 the previous year.
Another one of Harriman’s firms, the headhunting operation called Burlington Search Limited, continues to operate at the same offices where he worked with Becker.
The firm, set up in 2002 with fellow businessman Charles Michael Humbert. According to account filed last March, it has assets of £74,460 – down from £101,810, the previous year.
Harriman, who was born in Nigeria but moved to Britain as a child, is the son of Chief Hope Harriman, a businessman and politician once described as ‘one of the founding fathers of modern Nigeria’.
He attended private boarding school Bradfield College in Berkshire – where parents pay fees of £56,000-a-year – before moving into the social circles of aristocrats, celebrities and royalty.
Harriman started out as a music promoter in his 20s before going into business.
He has been friends with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for years, and it was at 5 Hertford Street that Harriman dined with Meghan on the eve of her blind date with Harry in early 2016.
Finding Freedom, which was co-written by Harry and Meghan’s friend Omid Scobie and published in 2020, detailed the meal and described Harriman as someone who could ‘often be found at polo matches alongside Prince William and Kate Middleton’.
Scobie and his co-author Carolyn Durand added: ‘While Meghan might have enjoyed sipping gin fizzes under the club’s hushed lighting, what she really looked forward to was a blind date she had planned for the following evening.’
Harriman would go on to claim some credit for Meghan meeting Harry.
He told Vogue in 2022: ‘Meg reminded me that had I not introduced her to a mutual friend then she wouldn’t have met Harry. I’m grateful for whatever small part I played.’
Last year Harriman denied claims that he had edited the image taken of Harry and a pregnant Meghan after comments he made in a BBC radio interview re-surfaced.
In April 2022 he joined Prince Harry at the Invictus Games at the Hague in the Netherlands and two months later photographed Lilibet at her first birthday party at Frogmore Cottage, which was then Meghan and Harry’s official UK home on the Windsor estate.
Harriman was the only photographer invited by the Duke and Duchess to cover their tour of Nigeria in May last year.
Meghan gave a glowing tribute to Harriman when his short film The After starring David Oyelowo and Jessica Plummer was nominated for an Oscar and they remain close friends.
Harriman is unlikely, however, to add Becker to the ever growing list of celebrities who are clamouring to have their photographs taken by him.
But Becker at least seems to have finally found the ideal partner to oversee his financial affairs.
His third wife Lilian De Carvalho, 33, who he married last September, is a risk analyst.
Mr Harriman has been approached for comment.