The
Royals: A servant fit for a king
A new documentary
turns its lens onto the staff that iron Charles' shoelaces, clean up
after the corgis and do about anything for the Royal Family.
By JEFF GREENStaff
Reporter
Tues., Jan. 15, 2013
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2013/01/15/the_royals_a_servant_fit_for_a_king.html
They iron Prince
Charles’ shoelaces flat, squeeze his toothpaste even aid in his
royal urine sample — those are just some of the over-the-top
requests the Royals have asked their legion of servants known simply
as, The Firm.
In his third
documentary on the Royals in five years, filmmaker John Curtin turns
his lens towards the staff who’ve had a front row seat to the fairy
tale life of the entitled.
“They treat (their
servants) almost like they’re just furniture,” Curtin said. “But
then obviously the furniture has eyes and ears and curiosity.”
Omnipresent,
powerless and paid a pittance, servants clean up after the untrained
corgis that defecate on “priceless” rugs and have been asked by
Princess Diana to be an undertaker when she wanted a friend’s
miscarried baby buried in the garden at Kensington Palace.
“They’re all
totally under the spell,” Curtin told the Star. “It’s almost
like they believe in the divine right of kings.”
Curtin’s
documentary, Serving the Royals: Inside the Firm, airs Thursday night
on CBC and features some of the most famous servants to the Royals,
including top aides to Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.
It doesn’t include
the Royal urine sample, something Curtin said happened after Charles
broke his arm playing polo, but it does show a maturing Prince
William that has warmed up to the idea of more servants — just in
time for “Will and Kate’s” move into Kensington Palace.
Andrew Pierce, Royal
Editor for the Daily Mail, said William has “become to assume one
or two characteristics of his father,” and that his staffs now call
him “sir and Your Royal Highness.”
The corgis also live
the pampered life, explains royal chronicler Brian Hoey. No servant
dares to discipline the dogs, “so the footmen and the housemaids
have to go around with a supply of soda water and blotting paper,
because the corgis do whatever corgis want to do, wherever they want
to do it.”
The Duke and Duchess
of Cambridge announced this week that the future Royal baby is due in
July, but have just one posting for a nanny.
The long-awaited
return of the Royal couple is expected to be decidedly different from
the days of midnight escapades by both Diana and Charles at
Kensington Palace.
About Diana, Paul
Burrell, a longtime footman for the Queen and personal butler to
Princess Diana says: “It was my duty to go out in the middle of the
night and ferry back people whom she wanted to be with, in the boot
of my car.” Curtin described Burrell as “the number one guy to
get,” for the documentary. “You could say he’s the most famous
servant in history.”
Burrell, much like
all the former staff featured in the film, has been black listed by
the Royal Family. Accused of stealing following Diana’s death and
saddled with legal bills, Burrell cashed in with a pair of tell-all
books in 2003 and 2006.
Others, like Tiggy
Petifer, William and Harry’s former nanny, and the late William
Tallon, head butler to the Queen Mother known as Backstairs Billy,
stayed loyal to the Royal family.
Curtin joked that he
and his crew “drove all the way to Wales just to get a shot of her
(Tiggy) driving down her driveway.” Tiggy never needed the money,
but Tallon was cut off when the Queen Mother died in 2002, the
documetary explains.
Tallon was found by
a neighbour dead in his apartment five year’s after her death. He
was never rewarded for his loyalty, recalled ITN News Royal
correspondent, Robert Jobson.
“One minute you’re
there and the next minute you’re replaced by someone else.”
The documentary
suggests it would be bad press for William to dump the serving staff
as he and Kate move back to the spotlight. How much William turns
from the idealistic youth Diana shaped him to be, to a version of his
pampered father, Charles, is yet to be seen.
But they won’t be
living the secluded Wales life they do now, Burrell said.
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