On Duty With the Queen: My Time as a Buckingham Palace Press Secretary Read Free

around pretty well.
    Yes, I was based in the same place and going to work with the same people – people with whom I had an established relationship – but now I had a completely different role. I was firmly on the inside looking out towards my former colleagues, and more importantly, I was one of the team whose job it was to manage how the Royal Family was presented.
    I was welcomed by everyone in the press office, and at 10am Robin Janvrin held his daily morning meeting. The forthcoming State Visit to London by President Turgut Özal of Turkey was top of the agenda. I was well versed regarding State Visits because I had covered a greatmany of them, but from this day on, I would be working alongside the planning team.
    Following the morning meeting I was taken on a tour of the offices. It was a way of putting a stamp on my arrival, emphasizing that I was no longer a hack but a member of the royal household. Mid-morning, Philip Mackie, the incumbent I was succeeding, walked me across Green Park to St James’s Palace to meet the Prince and Princess of Wales’s team. A large group of tourists lined the Palace railings in the hope of spotting a member of the Royal Family. Being the subject of the crowd’s excited scrutiny was a novel experience, and an insight into what it must feel like to exist within the goldfish bowl of global celebrity.
     
    In the coming weeks and months, I’d make the run to St James’s Palace often, up to three or four times a day was the norm. If a royal story broke, or more dramatically, was
about
to break, it really was a ‘run’. Fleet Street snappers would descend upon the gates and it was my job to control them.
    For a reporter there’s a
lot
of running around. Running to cover a story, running to get to the next story, and then negotiating the complexities of London’s transport system to get back to the studio to edit the tape. That was the way I had always kept fit, but life had changed. Despite the dashes to St James’s, I was now primarily based at the Palace. Given the long days I knew I’d invariably be working, it was time to establish a new exercise regime.
    I was never much of a jogger, but I did enjoyswimming, and I knew there was a pool in the Palace, tucked just behind the Belgian Suite. I decided that one of the first things I’d do was enquire about the guidelines for household staff using it. I went to see the Master of the Household, Rear Admiral Sir Paul Greening. Paul was very much a people person, having been a career officer in the Royal Navy and, prior to joining the Royal Household at Buckingham Palace, commander of the Royal Yacht
Britannia
. He had also been responsible for planning the Prince and Princess of Wales’s honeymoon in 1981.
    ‘Yes, you can indeed use the pool,’ he confirmed when I asked him. ‘Just as long as it’s not at a time when a member of the Royal Family is using it.’
    This mostly referred Diana, an avid swimmer who took to the pool most days at 7am. Princess Margaret liked to take her dip late morning, ‘which is probably why it’s a bit overheated,’ Paul added dryly.
    He also told me I could leave my towel and trunks there. ‘As long as you don’t leave them lying around,’ he added, with his characteristic military attention to detail.
    So that was me sorted. I’d always been an early riser. Living in Windsor and working in central London, it was something of a necessity, given the traffic. I would simply start early enough to cram in my swim and be out of the pool before Diana arrived. I began a daily morning swim the following Monday – a ritual I would continue for the next three or four years, till the time when the increased chlorination – insisted upon by Princess Margaret – began affecting my eyes.
    In the meantime, it turned out to be the perfect routine. As on-the-job perks go, it seemed a pretty cool one, no matter how overheated the water.
    I had already met the two royals whom I would ultimately answer