How ‘One Take Windsor’ was forced to re-record Christmas message...by a chirruping bird
SHE’S been dubbed ‘ One- Take Windsor’ by broadcasters for her professionalism in always getting things right first time.
But the Queen had to re-record last year’s Christmas message – because a bird in the Buckingham Palace garden began to chirp.
In a new documentary, Her Majesty is shown responding to a member of the production team who asks her to ‘redo it from the top’.
Peering at him, she asks: ‘From the top of the second page?’
‘From the very start,’ comes the reply. ‘You want the whole thing again?’ ‘If possible.’ Then she chuckles. With access to private home movies, the ITV documentary, entitled Queen Of The World, also features Royal Yacht Britannia, which was controversially decommissioned in 1997. The first Royals to sail on her were Prince Charles and Princess Anne when they were aged five and three – and they did not get the special treatment they may have now become accustomed to.
‘We were kept very busy,’ The Princess Royal revealed. ‘There were lots of things to do. All sorts of places to go... and lots of scrubbing and polishing. That was always part of our role.’
Prince Charles in particular was treated as one of the team, according to long-serving Royal Yachts- man Ellis Norrell. But the young Prince once made the mistake of ‘shaking a lad who had been asleep’.
Norrell recalled that the sailor ‘picked [Charles] up by the scruff of the neck and said, “Don’t you do that again or you’ll never live to be King,” and put him down.’
But while Charles and Anne enjoyed themselves with the crew, life became more stressful when the Queen was on board.
A chef explains: ‘Day to day, the menu was shown to the Queen. She would get it normally at the breakfast and she’d cross out if she didn’t want something and then write what she wanted, then it’d be a frantic running round everywhere ... “she’s changed the menu!” ’
A Royal yachstman also recalls that the Queen had strong preferences when it came to the onboard cinema, saying she ‘ didn’t like cowboy films’.
At another point in the documentary – which will air on ITV at 9.15pm on Tuesday – Prince Charles is shown paying a poignant tribute to his mother for taking on the ‘enormous task’ of being Queen from the young age of 25.
‘To have met that challenge the way she did is truly remarkable,’ he said. ‘It appeared effortless, but it jolly well isn’t, of course.’
And Prince Harry is shown meeting a group of young people from the Caribbean who have been invited to work and train in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. They joke that they have parties every night – to which Harry responds: ‘Oh dear.’
‘Do that again and you’ll never live to be King’