Wills: Day I got bodyguard to scare off football rival
HAVING royal protection officers at your beck and call has its advantages.
For the Duke of Cambridge has revealed how, as a schoolboy footballer, he asked a bodyguard to ward off a rival player by posing as a sniper.
William said when he played ‘everyone wanted to break my legs’ so he once asked a policeman to shine a laser’s red dot on the troublesome opponent – although the trick only worked to keep him away for ten minutes.
The future king’s candid comments came as he shared embarrassing stories over a pint during an appearance on BBC Radio Five Live’s That Peter Crouch Podcast. During the chat at Kensington Palace, they had a curry delivered.
The duke also spoke about the Heads Up campaign to get football fans talking about their emotions. During the wide-ranging chat, he revealed he enjoyed a stag do in Blackpool, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is his go-to karaoke song, and a pair of binoculars given to Kate as a present early in their relationship was not well received. During the podcast, recorded before lockdown started and featuring a catchup video call from earlier this month, William said: ‘A long time ago, I got one of my policemen to take a laser pen out with them. And I got him to red mark, red dot one of the players.
‘I was about 15 at the time, I said, “see, he’s following you, following you”.’ Crouch, a former England forward, asked: ‘Pretending to have a sniper on him?’ and William replied: ‘Exactly... it put him off for about, you know, ten minutes.’
The self-deprecating duke, an avid Aston Villa fan, also referred to his defending style as a ‘fat knacker running around at the back, panting’.
BBC Radio Five Live’s That Peter Crouch Podcast is available to download from Wednesday.
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