Princess Anne’s furious three-word outburst on King Charles
An undercover footman once heard Princess Anne berating a staff member with several expletives used in a harsh telling-off.
The moment when a staff member was harshly spoken to by Princess Anne for fumbling a task has been revealed in a documentary. A 2015 documentary, titled Serving the Royals: Inside the Firm revealed Daily Mirror reporter, Ryan Parry, secured a job as a footman in 2003 to experience the “almost feudal class structure” of the Royal Household.
Speaking of his general experience, he explained: “You are a servant to people of higher calling and you have to behave in a subservient manner.” Although once getting a telling off for breaking china, he explained it was not as bad as a fellow footman’s interaction with the Princess Royal after getting a task wrong. Mr Parry said: “She [Princess Anne] looked at him and said ‘you incompetent t***!'”
However, Princess Anne is not the only royal to have spoken in this manner. The journalist claimed that a more senior footman told him he had gone into Prince Andrew’s room one morning, opened the curtains and said: “Good morning your Royal Highness” to which Andrew replied: “F*** off.”
The documentary profiled 1,200 servants, consultants, advisers, and guards working for the Firm. The description stated: “They iron the Queen’s sheets, polish Philip’s riding boots, squeeze Charles’s toothpaste and walk the royal corgis”, adding “Round the clock they toil, often thanklessly, to keep the monarchy humming”. According to the Guardian, Parry secured his job as a footman after replying to an advert on the official Buckingham Palace website in August.
The outlet reports he provided one fake reference and one real reference and submitted a CV that made no mention of his journalistic career. Princess Anne is the second child and only daughter of the late Queen Elizabeth II and late Prince Philip and often dubbed as the “hardest working” royal. In 2023, Princess Anne attended the most royal engagements of any member of the Royal Family, as reported by the Telegraph.
According to the newspaper’s tally using the Court Circular, the official record of previous engagements, the Princess Royal, 73, conducted 457 engagements. The late Queen’s former press spokesperson, told the outlet of her tireless dedication: “She just gets on with it, often carrying out multiple engagements in one day.”
In the same year, King Charles was second on the list with 425 royal engagements, snapping up the same spot behind his sister that he did in 2022.
