Paul Burrell might be best known as the controversial former butler to Princess Diana, but before he worked for the late royal, Burrell served Queen Elizabeth as a footman at Buckingham Palace. In a recent conversation, Burrell, speaking on behalf of Champions Speakers Agency, recalls a particularly memorable moment with the late Queen—and the joke that she didn’t quite get.
Burrell, 68, shares that one of his duties was to bring the Imperial State Crown to Queen Elizabeth before the State Opening of Parliament each year. After it was brought over from the Tower of London, the former footman would bring the historic crown on a red cushion and “take it into the Queen’s bedroom and put it on a small table.”
Queen Elizabeth was known to practice wearing the Crown Jewels around the house due to their weight, even wearing St Edward’s Crown, used for her coronation, to give Prince Charles and Princess Anne a bath. While Burrell certainly didn’t intrude on the late monarch’s bath time, he describes one night when he witnessed Queen Elizabeth taking part in some crown-wearing practice.
“On one evening, I went into her room, and the room was in pitch black. And I stood there in the doorway. She’d rung her bell to say goodnight,” he recalls. “And I stood there, transfixed.”
Burrell shares that Queen Elizabeth was sitting at her desk wearing the Imperial State Crown, and her lamp meant the “facets of all the diamonds and emeralds and sapphires were shooting in my direction.”
When the late Queen asked him why he was smiling, Burrell says he replied, “Your Majesty, if only your people could see you now."
“She said, ‘What do you mean?’” the former palace staffer continues. “I said, ‘Well, wearing your crown around your house’. And as I looked down, she was wearing her pink, fluffy slippers.”
Burrell told the late monarch that her ensemble was “a sign of a monarch and a mother all rolled into one,“ adding “It would make a very good pub name. The Crown and Slippers.”
The footman, who was called “Small Paul” to set him apart from footman Paul Whybrew, a.k.a. “Tall Paul,” shares that Queen Elizabeth didn't quite get the joke. “I don’t think she found that very amusing,” he says. “She didn’t understand pub names.”
He also admits to “nearly” trying on the Imperial State Crown for himself...until the late Queen walked in on him.
“The Queen had a long dressing mirror in her bedroom,” he shares. “So, on one occasion, I went in there, I looked at the crown, I looked at the dressing mirror, and I thought, 'Dare I?' And just at that moment, The Queen came through the bedroom door.”
