'Non-negotiable' rules Queen Elizabeth II had for Christmas with royal family
'No one messes with the Queen's timetable'It seems Queen Elizabeth II had some pretty strict rules for the royal family at Christmas.
Former royal butler, Paul Burrell, has spilled the beans on some of the late Queen’s non-negotiables for the festive season…
Queen Elizabeth’s Christmas rules
Speaking to OLBG, Paul explained that the Queen loved a full house.
“Our late Queen always insisted on having her entire family with her at Windsor Castle back in the day and in my day, the castle was filled to the rafters with royals. There wasn’t a spare room, everyone was invited and that was non-negotiable,” he said.
Apparently, the monarch was particularly set in her ways when it came to eating.
No one messes with the Queen’s timetable
“The non-negotiable things are meal times. Everyone has to appear for breakfast at 9am. Everyone has to have lunch at 1pm, tea at 5 o’clock, and dinner at 8:15pm,” he said.
“No one messes with the Queen’s timetable,” he insisted. “So your day revolves around the monarch, and in my time, tea time was probably the most important, where the Queen would make tea and pour a cup of tea and have her entire family with her, then she could have a conversation with everyone and find out what’s going on in their worlds.”
Even exchanging Christmas presents sounded like a military operation under the late Queen.
“Everybody had to bring a present and everybody had to place that present on a table which was marked for a particular member,” Paul claimed. “There’s a massive trestle table all sectioned off from the Queen at one end down to the lady in waiting at the far end, and everybody had a space.”
William and Harry’s prank on their grandmother
However, the former royal butler shared that there had still been room for plenty of fun alongside the Queen’s rules and routines.
He revealed some mischievous pranks young Princes William and Harry had pulled on their grandparents.
“I remember finding joke presents for William and Harry to give. I’d have to go out shopping to Selfridges, Harrord’s and Fortnum and Mason and all the top stores and find things that were unusual or funny,” he said.
“I came back with a selection and we perused all these gifts with the Princess [Diana] and William and Harry went straight for the whoopee cushion. They said to the Princess, ‘This would be great to put under Granny’s cushion when she sits down’, and the Princess looked at them both and said, ‘Do you think that’s wise? It’s more suitable for Grandpa’. So the Princess steered them in the right direction.”
“Prince Philip loved it,” he added.
On another occasion, Paul apparently supplied the princes with “fake dog poo”.
“The boys loved to put [it] in the corridor for Granny,” he recalled. “Then they’d go running and say, ‘Granny, there’s a mess in the corridor. It has to be one of the corgis’. And the Queen would come out alarmed but she thought that was hilarious because she’d never seen anything quite like that before.”
Read More: Queen Elizabeth II’s heartbreaking words about husband Philip in her final Christmas speech
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