A royal insider has revealed the simple household job that the late Queen would take great delight in accomplishing, often charming her guests with the down-to-earth habit
Despite the huge list of privileges that come with being a member of the royal family, there is one thing that not all of us are immune to: household chores. While it’s safe to assume that the royals have an army of Palace staff that keep their homes in pristine condition, there are always some things you just have to do yourself.
For the late Queen, one household chore was actually very therapeutic, with the monarch often charming her house guests by taking up the humble habit, as a royal expert claims Her Majesty revelled in donning a pair of yellow gloves and doing the washing up.
In his biography Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, Gyles Brandreth revealed the Queen’s wholesome habit, with former Prime Minister David Cameron recalling the moment he tried to help with the dirty dishes during one of his trips to Balmoral.
The former Prime Minister told Gyles: “I’m not making this up, you sat down and Prince Philip and Her Majesty The Queen served your dinner and cleared it away and washed it up while you sat talking with the other guests.
“I remember thinking it was sort of year five, I thought: ‘Well, I now surely can help’ and got up and got on the Marigolds and started doing the washing-up. And I remember Her Majesty saying: ‘What on earth is the Prime Minister doing?’ I’d broken with the protocol and rapidly sat back down and did what I was told.”
Mr Cameron wasn’t the only person charmed by the Queen’s insistence to clean up after herself and her guests, as another close friend of the Firm recounted a similar experience during a small luncheon.
Dickie Arbiter, who worked closely with the Queen for many years as her Press Secretary, was invited to a small private lunch with the late Monarch and her husband, Prince Philip, which ended up with the two of them carrying out the unexpected domestic chore.
Speaking to True Royalty TV , Dickie explained that he had volunteered to clean up from the lunch and ventured to the kitchen to begin the process of washing dishes when he heard a “very familiar voice” behind him.
He said: “When I arrived at Buckingham Palace, my boss said to me, ‘you’ve been invited to Balmoral for a dine and sleep to meet the Queen’.
“There were only four of us at this lunch: The Queen, her lady-in-waiting, Prince Philip and myself. It lasted about 45 minutes, with china plates, silver cutlery and Tupperware that we helped ourselves from.
“And at the end of it, the Queen said, ‘We’ve got to clear up’ and I took it as my cue as the junior flunky to do the washing up. So I went into the kitchen and started washing up. I heard this footfall behind me and assumed it was the lady-in-waiting coming to give me a hand.
“I said over my shoulder without even turning, ‘Okay, I’ll wash you dry’. This very familiar voice behind me said, ‘No, I’ll wash, you dry’. It was the Queen. So she plunged her hands into the fairy liquid – no gloves – and I did the drying up. It was quite an experience to actually do a bit of domesticity with a head of state.”