Princess Anne’s ‘strict’ food demand: former footman tells all

Queen Elizabeth isn’t the only one with odd food habits.

Princess Anne, the monarch’s only daughter and second eldest, reportedly has a surprising food request for palace chefs, according to her former royal footman.

Steven Kaye, who worked for the royal family for more than three years, told Slingo the 72-year-old royal prefers to eat very overripe bananas that are almost to the point of being rotten.

“Princess Anne was lovely,” Kaye said in a Q&A interview, recounting a “funny story” that happened in the palace kitchen.

“Once the chefs had cleaned up in the kitchen, you’d go and get things for breakfast and there would always be a bunch of bananas literally on the side that were black, they were left to rot, they were never put away in the fridge,” he said.

“I remember asking who they were for and it turns out the princess royal only eats black bananas — the royal chef had strict instructions to serve them overripe,” Kaye added.

Princess Anne’s mother also has some delightfully shocking eating preferences and has even eaten the same meal every day since she was a child.

Her former chef, Darren McGrady, revealed in a video that the 96-year-old monarch always eats jam sandwiches during afternoon tea time. The sovereign has munched on the finger sandwiches since she was a girl and she is also a big lover of gin-based drinks.

Elsewhere in the Slingo interview, Kaye spilled some tea about his experiences working with the royal family, a position he got after personally writing a letter to the queen asking for a job.

He described one moment when he had to handle Her Majesty’s infamous corgis, namely her dog Emma which many people tried to avoid at all costs since she’s an ankle biter.

“There was one corgi called Emma that stood out. You’d be walking along the corridor and you’d always try to avoid her because she’d try and bite your ankles,” he said.

The former footman also revealed the dogs have “their own dog room at Buckingham Palace.”

“It’s quite regal — a great big dark wooden glossy door with a gold handle and beautifully polished floor with all these dog beds all over the place,” he described.

Kaye then explained how the footman would put out the food for the dogs in the morning at Buckingham Palace, but the queen “would feed them herself at 3 in the afternoon.”  

“We used to feed the dogs in the morning,” he said. “We would put the food out, most of them had special dietary requirements, so we’d have to remember who had what and they all had a silver dog bowl with their name engraved on it.”

In fact, feeding wasn’t the only duty Her Highness took on herself.

“We’d literally be walking the dogs and you’d turn around, the queen would be there with her headscarf on,” he recalled, “and she’d be like, ‘Oh, I’ll take over now.’ We were relieved of our duties and off she went.”