Like their mother Princess Diana, both Prince William and Prince Harry would enjoy chatting to staff casually in the kitchens of the royal households.
They also, like their late mom, loved a gossip and a tease with staffers — and one day, that may have gone too far.
Grant Harrold, a former butler to King Charles and his sons, recalls, “You hear these stories about their mother and how she would go in the kitchens and sit on the worktops and have chats. What was nice about her boys is they were the same.”
“The nice thing about Catherine and William, and Harry, is they always thank people. The King [when he was Prince Charles] would too — he’d be grateful. But they would always come and find you and thank you for what you’d done,” he adds.
Photo: Chris Jackson – WPA Pool/Getty
Harrold — promoting his new book The Royal Butler, out Sept. 23, which chronicles his journey from working-class Scotland to serving the late Queen Elizabeth — recalls one such chat where the conversation turned to aging.
“I said, ‘From a man’s point of view, the worst is when you start receding, you start going bald,’” he remembers. “Catherine started sniggering, and I looked over at William and he said, ‘Thanks, Grant!’ and leaned forward to show his hair.”
Photo: The Royal butler/X
But the prince was able to get back at the butler one day. Harrold had gone out and got a fake tan in Bath, a short drive away from Highgrove House — however, it didn’t go quite as planned. Serving dinner soon afterward, Charles and Camilla wondered what the strange smell was.
“Camilla was looking at me, just staring. [The King] said, ‘What have you done? What color did you pick, ‘Oompa Loompa?’ ” Harrold recalls.
Prince William and his then-girlfriend Catherine saw him soon afterwards. “William said, ‘What have you done? Has it gone everywhere?’ and being told yes, he repeated, ‘Everywhere?’ I said it was ‘everywhere.’ He said, ‘Can I see it?’ ”
Harrold explains, “I had to take my shoes and socks off to show him my toes, which were orange!”
“He thought it was brilliant. He got his own back!” he adds.
Chatting to media chatting over tea and cakes at the Rubens Hotel in the shadow of where he used to work at Buckingham Palace, Harrold jokes, “I’m just lucky I didn’t dye my hair green as well, I’d have been in the next Wonka movie.”
