Grant Harrold worked as a butler at Highgrove for seven years, and has lifted the lid on the first time he met Prince Harry, King Charles’ softer side, an X-rated quip from Prince Philip, and many more secret moments
After working as a butler in Highgrove for seven years between 2004 and 2011, Grand Harrold got to know a different side of the royal family, and became privy to some key moments between those who are now senior working royals.
During his time at the King’s country home in Gloucestershire, he spent a lot of time with Prince William and Prince Harry, who were in their late teens and early 20s at the time, and King Charles, before he had officially tied the knot with Queen Camilla .
Now Harrold has revealed some major revelations about moments he witnessed during his time at Highgrove and beyond, including a cheeky X-rated quip from Prince Philip, and his first time meeting Prince Harry, as he prepares to release his memoir.
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Meeting Prince Harry
Harrold told the Telegraph that he met Harry after he had been working at Highgrove for several weeks. When the royal butler, who was 25 at the time, started working for the royal family, Harry was on his gap year.
Harry, who was 19 at the time, ambushed Harrold on their first meeting with a water balloon fight, targeting the butler with a water balloon to the back as he tried to climb out a window to escape the oncoming attack.
Harry then ran upstairs and began pelting more balloons at him from a height, causing Harrold to make a run for it. Bursting through a door, he came face to face with the Prince, who said: “Sorry. I’m just being a bit silly.”
The two men then formally introduced themselves, with Harry then inviting Harrold to join him for a takeaway for dinner to “keep him company.”
In a contrast, the royal butler said Prince William had been “warm, if a little guarded” on their first meeting, but insisted Harrold simply called him William.
Surprise side to King Charles
During his time working at Highgrove, Harrold recalled how he loved working for Charles in particular, noting that he has a soft side to him, and describing him as “a very gentle character”.
He fondly recalled: “Very calm. He works hard and he doesn’t suffer fools. He gets on with everyone. He does get perceived as out of touch and he’s not.”
Contrary to speculation that he can occasionally be irritable, Harrold said that in seven years Charles “didn’t once raise his voice”.
Camilla claims ‘don’t add up’
Harrold’s time at Highgrove coincided with the time Charles and Camilla announced their engagement and subsequently got married, as he pointed out some of the comments made by Harry in his memoir Spare and how they didn’t reflect what he saw.
In Harry’s 2023 memoir, he wrote how he and now estranged brother William begged their father not to marry his now wife. He wrote: “We support you, we said. We endorse Camilla, we said. ‘Just please don’t marry her. Just be together, Pa’.”
However, despite Harry’s protestations in the book, Harrold recalled William and Harry decorating their father’s car with ‘Just Married’ signs with both of them racing after the car as the newlyweds drove away following their wedding reception.
And he says what he saw was a far cry from what Harry wrote in his memoir. He told The Telegraph : “The four of them, I promise you, got on so well. And that’s why I don’t understand what Harry’s said, I really don’t understand.
“Because I saw them. I saw them having dinners together, I saw them having drinks together, I saw them going to parties together.”
William, Kate and Harry’s ‘little gang’
Harrold recalled how William, his then-girlfriend Kate Middleton, and Prince Harry would spend a lot of time together during his time working at Highgrove, remarking especially on the close bond between Catherine and Harry.
“They involved him,” Harrold said. “He [Harry] used to go out with Kate. William would be away and Kate and Harry would be off doing stuff together. They’d go shopping together, they’d go to pubs together. I think when people say ‘oh he was left out’, he really wasn’t.
“But also he was with Chelsy [Davy, Harry’s former girlfriend]. Chelsy was always around. And Chelsy and Kate got on really well.”
King’s admission
Harrold said that one of his fondest memories from his time working with the royal family were the walks he would take with Charles and the conversations they would have. One such talk involved the two men pondering what Charles might be called when he became King.
Harrold said: “I remember asking him what he would be, and he said to me ‘I could be Charles, but I could also be George VII’, which is quite nice because his grandfather was George VI.
“I remember speaking to one of the butlers about it and he said ‘yeah, he’s mentioned that to me as well’. We were getting the impression that he would probably be George VII. So I was shocked when they announced he was Charles III.”
Despite being redundant in May 2011 when the royal household began “scaling back operations” in preparation for the time when Charles would become king, Harrold still refers to Charles as “the boss”.
Prince Philip quip
In Harrold’s upcoming book coming out later this month, titled The Royal Butler, he recalled a cheeky comment made by Prince Philip to Queen Elizabeth at the conclusion of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ’s wedding in 2018.
Watching the royal family file out of the ceremony, which included the famous 14-minute sermon by Bishop Michael Curry, Harrold was watching on and caught some choice words muttered by the late Duke of Edinburgh.
“Once all the formalities were over, we watched as the happy couple, and then the other members of the Royal family, filed out of the chapel,” he writes. “When Prince Philip came out he turned to the Queen and said, ‘Thank f*** that’s over.’”
On the day of the wedding Harrold had been providing punditry for a broadcaster before he joined his partner, Jack Stooks, who was invited to watch the royal party leave the chapel and brought the royal staffer along as his guest.