Royal Security Officer On Life Inside The Royal Family | Minutes With | @LADbible​

On this particular occasion, I walked into Prince Andrew's bedroom and apartments and on his bed were 72 teddy bears. My inspector showed me a laminated card found on the side of one of the bedroom cabinets with a photo of these teddy bears. everything in situ and he said the reason for that picture is because the mice have to put them back exactly as it is in that picture. They said if they don't do it, it screams and screams, so can you start by explaining to me what the real protection

officer

's job basically means is that we provide arm protection 24 hours a day, 365 days a day. anus.

I was at the Palace from 1998 to 2004. And my role was to protect the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Andrew, they were the ones who lived at Buckingham Palace at the time, can you give me a brief overview of when you joined Buckingham Palace, when I joined? I think Princess Diner had just passed away the year before, um, the unit at the time was full of quite a few older police

officer

s coming to the end of their retirement because that kind of unit back then was a place where you were going to retire. and see the last years of your

life

in the place, um, from the impression I had when I got there, Prince Charles was not the most popular individual or member of the

royal

family

because of what happened to Princess Diana, there was There was a lot of blame on him and the

royal

house, so the general feeling among officials was that it was his fault what happened to Princess Diner which other members of the royal

family

's

life

were right, to be fair, obviously, the Prince William, Prince Harry, when I was there, they were just young, they were very nice kids, they always spoke to the place where I was and when they got in and out in the vehicles the others were quite simple.

Stern didn't really have any conversations with them the queen um was very kind. I'm better on several occasions in the garden and she would stop and talk, obviously, you don't talk to her, she talks to you, but yes, she would hang out if she was in the garden, so you mentioned that Prince Andrew was one of the people they were about to protect, so what was your first impression of the princess? He was very unpleasant, an angry individual. Obviously, we have a lot of

security

procedures in the palace. The doors have to be closed. The doors must be secured.

Guests must be screened. Before they left him, we never heard of any problems with Prince Charles, Princess Anne or Prince Edward because they did not reside at Buckingham Palace, so my experience is purely with Prince Andrew and the ways of dealing with agents of police members of the royal household the waiting staff you know the maids the footman um because we were there in direct contact with him Prince Andrew um he would go crazy if we didn't open the door for him on time or if we detained one of his guests because we don't have the right idea or we haven't been given any information who they are, it would be verbally abusive to shout, swear, yes just a very rude individual, how would you treat other members of the group? um, the same maids, um, you.

I know the ways go ahead and um he explained to her that once he got her to go up four flights of stairs, she wrote on her curtains when she was sitting next to him. I remember going in at the weekend, we used to do alarm checks, personal attack alarms in all the bedroom roles and private apartments to make sure they are working when they were in Windsor and on this particular occasion they went into Prince Andrew's bedroom and his apartments and in his bed he was, now I know it was 72. I said around 50, but I had it confirmed.

It was 72 kushetta Canton 72 teddy bears in his bed um and I just thought okay and then my inspector showed me a laminated card that's on the side um side I drew one of the bedroom cabinets of a picture of these teddy bears, everyone in situ and said the reason for that photo is that the mice have to put them back exactly how they are in that photo, they said if they don't he screams and screams and abuses them and then a colleague came and confirmed that he had to do it. do that, otherwise he would scream and scream so you know that's not really the actions of some kind of good person, you know there are people who have to do that, um, he's a very entitled person, I mean, more than any member of the royal family um, he sticks out like a saw thumb, no one liked him talking about Prince Andrew and the people who visited him, who have you seen visit Prince Andrew?

Well, the one I said publicly about 14 years ago was gizlo Maxwell and she a very frequent guest of Prince Andrew, they met with her, she was the majority of the guests, as I say, nine to five Buckingham Palaces like a working building , so you will have guests coming and going to see members of the royal family, so to organize At the entrance doors there are police officers and then there are more police officers inside the building at the front, so the Private secretaries of different members of the royal family will call this office called Privy Purse and give them all the appointments for the day for each member of the royal family, so on one particular occasion the officer in the above telephoned the list of appointments for this day, an appointment for Prince Andrew, we were told that a guest would attend.

Think about lunch time, but her name should not be entered in the apartment book. So we asked why they told us her name was Gizzling Maxwell and then obviously we realized she was Robert Maxwell's daughter so we thought so. Obviously it's not a good look for her to attend the palace in Queensland, if it became public knowledge it could be embarrassing. About an hour later we passed a post office relay to walk back to the Police Lodge and entered the garden in the back garden, Bucking Palace, where the Queen's private apartments are visible and to our right, in the lawn next to the summer house, there was a picnic prepared by a footman and the maids, um, on our way back from the place.

Lodge about an hour later, Prince Andrew. I was sitting with jolly Maxwell having this particular picnic and again we said that if the queen looked out the window and realized she was kissing Maxwell sitting outside on our lawn she probably wouldn't be very happy and that was the first time I found myself. her, but after that it was the same routine, she was just allowed, we were told not to stop her, she was entering the palace, she was allowed directly through

security

and she would go straight to the courtyard where Prince Andrew's private was. The door is um, she was a regular visitor and I said this before a colleague of mine noticed that she had entered and left the palace four times in one day, so it was um wheelbarrow for Blanche to enter through an exit that no one else did. . one had that kind of facility apart from members of the royal family and for us as police officers.

Seeing this on a weekly basis, we formed the opinion that there was some kind of relationship between the pair. Have you seen other female guests? coming to Princeton, uh, yeah, I mean, like I mentioned, nine to five is office work hours when everyone has to have their names, that was the only time they didn't give us the name until we asked for it um and um after five o'clock, the palace closes there are no more appointments, that's a private engagement, like guests of the queen, like friends, um and things like that, who can show up or Prince Philip might have a friend come over , um, Prince Andrew used to have a lot of frequent visitors. female visitors after 5 p.m. m. until 11 p.m. m. of the night, the usual way was that we didn't ask questions, we weren't given the names of most of the ladies attending, they would appear at the front of the palace and say We had to see Prince Andrew, we would call his footman and his footman staff and they would come down and we would let the women write checks without names and we would just let them go straight to the palace to do the footmen where they would then be taken.

Even Prince Andrew, obviously, she's a clear security bridge because we need to know who's in the palace and we get people to show up saying they're here to see the queen, but they're not, they just have mental problems, so The idea of ​​people showing up saying they're here to see Prince Andrew and us just letting them in is ridiculous, but if we didn't, I'll give you one occasion when we didn't do that, a young girl probably showed up. 22 23 years old um he said he was here to see Prince Andrew, he just arrived about halfway through our previous one, so we knew he was in um, but the footman wasn't answering his phone, we couldn't, there was no way we could we would contact anyone. there, so we politely told the lady. "We're so sorry, we can't let you in right now because we can't confirm that you're expected," so she said, "Oh, should I call him on my cell phone?" so we said yes. okay so he called Prince Andrew on his mobile phone and we could hear him clearly so I put an officer on the phone so my colleague picked up the phone and said listen to me fat ladies let my guests in immediately.

I'm going. Down there everyone heard it and the lady turned red and apologized and we just let her in, so after that, obviously, those kind of problems we had with him we just let women in, we didn't ask questions because we just didn't want the grave, I mean. Complaints are made about him, you know he was a horrible, unpleasant individual, but no one was going to take a complaint to the Royal Household because he is the Queen's favourite, so we had to break the rules for him and the security of the Bridge, right? do you think it was like that?

It's pretty obvious that he was Quint's favorite, yeah, yeah, he was definitely the Queen's favorite, um, and probably the reason he's in so much trouble now is because he was the Queen's favorite, because no one attracted him and he had to move on. Whatever he wanted, you know, I'll give you another example. We on the Queen's flat there are cameras everywhere and we, the camera, no, it's an individual on the Queen's private floor of our apartments and we couldn't identify who he was. We're not at that time, but it's still a possible security alert, so the four of us and I saw four officers, including a sergeant, go down the hallway that we entered from both ends, so obviously we were able to meet this person in the middle and when we got closer we realized it was Prince Andrew so my sergeant explained what happened he apologized I said look we couldn't identify who was on campus we had to come and check it out and instead of saying Oh, I said no problem, he said when he said listen.

This is my house, I'll go wherever I want now, um, you know, we're doing our job, there's no need to talk to cops like that or anyone like that, you know, I've talked because people should know what Prince is. Andrew really likes it and then they judge for themselves. I mean the things I'm saying are being corroborated by other officers about how he intimidates people, how he yells and swears, you know he's not a good guy, that's the bottom line. Were you surprised when In the case of Britain v. Bruce Andrew, what I'm saying is that there are two sides to rejecting Prince Andrew, which we now know, and I think a lot of people realize that his mask has slipped now that he is not the clean individual that some staunch realists thought he was.

You know what obviously? um you know he's gone too far and said too many things, he's defended his relationship with a convicted pedophile and that for me and a lot of police officers, um, you know, we just couldn't believe it because he basically kicked it out in the face of every um Survivor of sexual crimes around the world on a daily basis water poses the greatest safety risk for royalty um people without mental problems because there are many stalkers with a real family, so Prince Andrew was in Windsor in his uh, At his residence in Windsor, a woman appears in a black taxi.

I think she was saying that she was there to see Prince Andrew. She has an apartment with him. The officers just let her in and she had mental problems, she was not a guest and they let her wander around his private home with him somewhere and before they knew it and they stopped her when she was arrested so that individual could have had a knife and a gun. I don't know and I could have met Prince Andrew. These are the type of people on a date today, not so much terrorism. um because we get concern level advice at the briefings every week, we'll get a security threat assessment basically from the government that will tell us if there are threats to the rules, so with the kind of protection hierarchy, obviously, the queen is on top, how many people protect her at the same time?

Well, let's say, for example, at Buckingham Palace, you have 24 hours. One day you have three or four shifts and each shift will probably have around 30 officers,so um and that will stay there all the time even when the queen goes to Windsor because they will be the same contingent at Windsor or if she goes to Barrymore like I said, half the officers will go with her until about the top, so she will have a good number of places and will also have a corridor officer who will be located outside our room door. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, as soon as you open the door there is someone standing there.

Then in a matter of seconds they would be in their room if they worked as a Royal Protection Officer. Which incident was the biggest security threat? the Royals, uh, we read Fagan, who years before I was there, came into the Queen's bedroom and sat on her bed, um, and that instigated a lot of that. I'm not going through security, that's to get a lot of information. security checks inside the palace, you know, there are a lot more cameras, rays, pressure pads, I mean, especially now that I've been out, I haven't been there for a long time, but I can imagine the improvement is quite substantial, I think Fagan was the worst. of all time, other than when Princess Anne was someone, I tried to kidnap Princess Anne and I think our protection office got shot in the mail, so yeah, that was the worst, but getting into the palace would be very, very difficult because as soon as an alarm goes off, you touch, touch certain areas, the alarms will go off, the cameras are focused on that position and then the offices will deploy armed officers from inside and outside the palace, as well as helicopters and dogs, in Five

minutes

the place will be surrounded.

So you know that if something ever happened it would be shut down immediately, but during your time there you haven't witnessed anything. No, let me think that no one is going to pass on to other members of the Royal Family. There has been enough. There is a lot of news about Harry, Megan and Harry leaving the royal family, but it is something that you could see coming and leave a mark. Or I think she was 35 or 30 when she came into the royal family, she had had a life, she was an actress, she had been married before, so I was pretty aware and I think what happened is she comes into the family. real and this archaic system has tried to control it and say: "you will do this, you will do that, you will not do it." go here you're not going there and she just said no I'm not going to live like this um and I think that was the problem because Megan didn't conform to the rules of the royal house and she really wanted to have a life. so that's where the problem started.

I want to talk a little bit about the general idea of ​​the royal family in general as someone who has been to Buckingham Palace and seen the lifestyle of the people there. I think what's going to happen is when the queen passes away, then I think the government will consider slimming down the royal family because of the cost implications. You'll probably get Charles Camilla William and his wife as the top four royals with his children, obviously, and I think the rest will be your security. It's possible for everyone to lose weight and therefore there will never be a time when it will be abolished, there will never be a time when losing weight will be abolished, yeah, you know, like I told probably four people plus the Williams kids, um , so I mean, they already did it with Harry, they cut him off, they cut his security, you know, because his bill, I think initially when he left, he had met with officers who were living in Canada with him and I think that was stopped, but their questions all over the place about who pays what, um, but.

I certainly noticed that the security bill was very, very high and they will look to reduce it once the queen passes away. It will be so obvious that it is a phone. She had a well-known Hollywood celebrity who was single, so it was very helpful to give her one of these with a pay-as-you-go Sim, which made her life a lot easier if she was giving out her numbers to new friends.