While touring the world, Queen Elizabeth donned many tiaras and shook countless hands. But while events like state banquets were planned down to the second, it turns out she absolutely loved when things went awry. Paul Burrell, who served as a footman to Queen Elizabeth before becoming Princess Diana's longtime butler, tells Marie Claire of one hilarious incident when the Royal Yacht Britannia gave The Queen an unexpected ride.
"I had many, many funny moments with The Queen," Burrell—speaking on behalf of Spin Genie—says. "I remember we were in Morocco on a tour and Britannia dropped alongside and the gangway was so steep." The former royal butler explained he went down the yacht's gangway "to open the car door" for Queen Elizabeth, who "was in full evening dress and tiara and white evening gloves" to head to an event.
"I was waiting for her, and I saw her appear at the top and literally it was almost like a water shoot slide. She put her hands on the rail and she literally lifted her feet and slid all the way down the gangway to the bottom," he recalls. Pardon me while I go back in time and insist someone takes a video of this moment.
Burrell adds that he didn't "expect to see the Queen in full evening dress and tiara behaving as if she was at Thorpe Park," referring to a popular British amusement park. While the late monarch took her slip-and-slide moment in stride—"she thought it was hilarious," Burrell notes—there was only one problem.
"She looked at her gloves and they were black because she'd held on to the gangway," which had been recently been polished, Burrell says. He "ran back up the gangway back to the dresser" and fetched a fresh pair of white gloves, telling Marie Claire, "I saved the day."
The royal author adds that Queen Elizabeth thought it was funny "because things like that don't happen," explaining that when it comes to royal life, "everything is so perfect. Everything happens as it should be."
However, "Occasionally, things go wrong, and that's what they find most amusing when they go wrong," Burrell notes. His sentiments echo a story Samantha Cohen, who worked for Queen Elizabeth for 18 years, recently told Australia's Herald Sun (via Vanity Fair) about the late monarch's love of blunders.
"She was so comfortable in herself, yet she loved it when things went wrong—if a cake was not cutting or a plaque didn’t unveil—because everything was so perfectly organized, it spiced her life up when things went wrong," Cohen told the outlet.
Burrell tells Marie Claire that "The Queen had a great sense of humor," adding "she loved to laugh and she loved practical jokes." Looking back on the story about a young Princess Elizabeth dumping an ink pot over her French teacher's head, we'd have to agree.
However, Burrell isn't a fan of Queen Elizabeth's portrayal in The Crown, sharing that he remembers a more light-hearted monarch.
"Peter Morgan wrote a very serious, very dour, very somber queen. It didn't give the nation a feel of who she really was," he says. "I mean, poor, poor Imelda Staunton. I mean, she didn't stand a chance with that because, you know, it didn't reflect the woman I knew, the Queen I knew."
