'Harry and Meghan are NEVER coming back as working royals!' Palace insider SLAMS 'whinger in chief'

Hello and welcome to GV News Originals. And today's guest is somebody who spent 12 years behind palace walls helping the royal family navigate some of the most turbulent times in modern history. So we're delighted to be joined, myself and Dot, by Dickie Arbiter, who has written a new book, On Duty with the Royals. And Dickie, you describe it as a collection of essays, don't you? Why is that? I think that's probably the best way to describe it, because if you look at all royal books that have been published recently, even in the past, they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They are a story written by people outside looking in. This one, every chapter is standalone, so you don't have to start it and then go right through to finish it to find out what happens at the end. Each chapter has a beginning and an ending. Then you can put it down for six months, then pick it up and pick another chapter if you want. Yeah, and you say the palace never really leaves you. What's the memory that always sticks in your mind when you think about working behind that palace walls? Well, working behind palace walls, I suppose the thing that really sticks in my mind, there were two occasions. One of them was 92, the Annus Horribilis, when anything that could go wrong did go wrong, culminating not just in the separation of Charles and Diana, but also the Windsor Fire, where the Queen was thrown under a bus by a politician who, following a briefing, less than 24 hours after the fire had started, when you go out in front of reporters, don't answer questions about cost, because we don't know what the costs are. Don't answer questions about the extent of the damage, because we don't know. And don't ask how it's going to be paid for or how the restoration will take place. We just don't know, because we haven't been inside. The firemen are still damping it down. So he walked out, and I was at that briefing, and he walked out, and the first question that came for a reporter, who's going to pay for it? The government will pay, he said, through the Queen under a bus. And not only did he say it on the Saturday, which is the day after the fire started, but he repeated it in Parliament. Well, because that, of course, led to Buckingham Palace having to be open to the public in order to pay for that renovation, and of course, the Queen voluntarily paying tax. The Queen voluntarily paying tax. She also paid £2 million towards the fund to the restoration, which cost in the region of just over £35 million, of which £28 million came from visitor attraction. Dickie, I'm going to hold this book up, because I feel like our audience needs to see it, but we'll say this. Om Jisi the Royal is by Dickie Arbiter. Do you know the most shocking part for me? You see this image in this video of the Queen, and you think she's smiley, she's warm, she's happy, and somebody who lots of people still miss now that she's gone four years later. There's a memorable moment she writes in this book about her appearing to be quite angry and holding up a chair in her study. Just talk us through what happened there. This was an occasion, I was on my way to the audience room where she held audiences, and it didn't matter whether it was President Mandela or the Prime Minister or whoever, and at the end of the corridor where I got to the top of the stairs, which was probably about 50 metres long, which is quite a long way, I heard this sort of angry shriek, and I got to the door, and she was standing in the doorway. She had a face like, like the only way she described, a face like a meat axe, and she had this chair in her hand, and she looked at me, and I cocked my head to one side, don't ask me why I did it, a bit cheeky, and I said, finished? And she just put the chair down and looked at me, smiled, and then went into the room and sorted out where the photographer was going to stand. I think that also showed the closeness to your relationship though, that you were able to have that funny cheeky moment. I suppose it did. I mean, another occasion, when I went to get my medal, LVO, Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, which was in 94, I had just finished with Charles and Diana, it was after the separation, and I'd spent five years with them, and she handed it to me, and she said, I think you deserve this, and I just came up with, it's a pity the family didn't take more notice of what was going on, and very calmly, she didn't scowl or anything like that, she said, the family is not your concern. And I knew that, because there was a definite line between what was private, and what was public, and the state of the marriage, as far as the family was concerned, was for the family to deal with, and not us in the press office. But she never told anybody, it was a conversation between she and me, and that was it. Well, speaking of the Wall of Waleses, you received a phone call from Diana, Princess of Wales, at five in the morning, as the Andrew Morton book was published on Diana. It was actually being serialised, the first serialisation was Sunday Times. Oh, was it? Okay, because of course, now we know that she had recorded tapes to give to Angie to write the book. Did you know that at the time? Why did she call you in distress, and what did you say to her? I think she had panicked. When she saw, I mean, she would probably have been up all night, and then, I don't know about now, because I don't go bother chasing the newspapers that early in the morning, but the Sunday Times always dropped at about 10 o'clock the previous night, on Saturday night, and she would have got one of those copies, and would have read it, and would have panicked, because she probably wouldn't have recognised when she was doing it, the enormity of what she was doing. And she phoned me and said, what do I do? I said, you've done it. There's nothing more you can do. And she said, well, what do I do? I said, okay, you don't go out, you don't make phone calls, you don't receive phone calls, and you don't do anything until you go on your next engagement. This is Sunday, and your next engagement is on Thursday. I'll be with you, and we'll take it from there. I don't know whether she took my advice, because sometimes they were good at taking it, sometimes they weren't. But at the engagement, which I can't remember, it was somewhere in the Middlelands, and she broke down. All of a sudden, it introduced her, and she just broke down. And there is a photograph of her, absolutely, her face screwed up in tears. Gosh. And do you remember your first conversation with the Queen, or the then Prince Charles, following that book? There were no conversations. There were no conversations. The mantra, never complain, never explain. I suppose that's what the Queen meant when she said to you, which you write in your book, that your job is not the family. Exactly. I think it's interesting, as I was saying, how much that has changed just in the reign of King Charles. We see so much of the private family business played out in public at the moment. Well, it is, and particularly when you think about when he announced his going to hospital for an enlarged prostate. That would never have happened in the Queen's reign. Look, right up to the end, when the Queen passed in 1922, all we were told was she had mobility issues. We didn't know what it was. And very rarely, even in my time, we might say that she was indisposed or she had a head cold, but nothing more than that. And then a few days after the prostate was the announcement that the King had a cancer. Now that, again, would never have happened. They were absolutely right. They were spot on in not saying what type of cancer, because the great British media would have focused on that to the detriment of other cancers and how they're being researched and treated. So they got that one right. And the fact that he was behind palace walls doing his constitutional duty, he also was savvy enough to know people will be concerned. So as he commuted from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace by car, he rolled the windows down so that people could see him. So yeah, he was okay. Today, he's still receiving treatment, but he's dashing around the country like a 25-year-old. What he is, he seems to have more energy than I do. I'm exhausted covering him and he's dashing around the country like a 25-year-old. I noticed that during the US state visit, the most, I mean, Camilla's a year older. I mean, the two of them, they had so much energy. I was exhausted covering that and I was just sat at my desk. If I could think about that, it was... And the US visit, it's interesting you mention that because he would have really enjoyed the US visit and he would have enjoyed standing up in Congress saying what he did say. He had been eating out of the palm of his hand. That's fantastic. And he took every point that Trump had looked upon as a negative and he made it into a positive. And then he reminded at the state dinner, reminding Trump that he said if they hadn't arrived in 1941, we'd all be speaking German. But he said, well, if we hadn't arrived, we'd all be speaking French. And it was very funny. Very clear. Very, very clear. Somebody said to me, you know, when did these things get sort of finalized? And with Charles, nothing is final until he's standing up and saying it. Although there was a time, I think, do you see an evolution of Charles? The reason I bring this up is because he was playing polo, wasn't he? And did he fall off his horse? Yeah. And so you didn't want to play, but you urged him to get back on the horse, quite literally. Yeah. This was an occasion, he was playing a charity match and people pay a lot of money to contribute to that charity. And it was important that he did play. He has a bad back. He's always had a bad back. That's why he has a cushion in the car or cushion on an aeroplane to support his back. And he was lying in a fairly enclosed area by the clubhouse and he really was in pain. And I understood what he was going through because I'd had back problems and I'd been operated on my back. So I knew what he was going through. And I said, you've got to get up because people are expecting to see you. And after about five minutes, he sort of had relaxed and he got up and he held his back with his hands, but he carried on playing, which was terrific. But another occasion, I'd been with him at Highgrove where he was doing a piece to camera for one of his charities. And then he went off to play polo and I was grabbing some lunch in the kitchen at Highgrove and a call came through that he'd come off his horse. They rushed to Cottage Hospital. And I dashed down there. Cut a long story short, he'd come out of surgery, out of the theatre. And I asked the consultant what he'd done. He gave me chapter and verse, by which time I went downstairs, there was a lot of press presence. And they were asking all sorts of questions. And the big question was, would he play again? I said, yes, he will play again. And I went upstairs and he was a bit woozy. And he said, I just watched you and you've done exactly what I wanted you to do. So it's allaying the fears. He did play polo again after that. But it was important to get that message across. And he was very good at getting messages across. You must have to have a certain, what's the word, resilience when working for the royal family. And a confidence perhaps, because they are these very incredible figures who are literally members of the royal family who have an unbroken line that dates back a thousand years. And yet, if someone is rude to you, Dickie, you stand up for yourself, particularly after a garden party where a certain prince wants to get a photograph with the queen. And you gave him chapter and verse. I did give him chapter and verse. The thing is that I was always considered a bit of a maverick. I spoke, I respected the rules, but I spoke to them like we're speaking now. They don't like the tugging of the forelock. They want straight talk. Yeah, they do. And I had a phone call from Andrew. It was a garden party, regular garden party, usually seven to eight thousand guests. And there were a hundred clergy there. They were there for a meeting that takes place every ten years. And they were all in their sort of crimson cassocks. And Andrew said, get chairs out in the garden, get them all seated, and I will get Her Majesty, never mum, mommy or anything like that. I will get Her Majesty to sit down. I said, no. He said, I beg your pardon. I said, no, it's not your garden party. If Her Majesty wants a picture with the clergy, she will ask the master, the master will ask me, and I'll organize it. And with that, he slammed the phone down. And sitting opposite me was his new press secretary, who'd only been there for two weeks, said, who was that? I said, your boss. He puts up the phone and said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to call it back. What are you going to say to him? Listen. So I phoned. Yes, what do you want? He said, don't you ever slam the phone down on me like that again. And I slammed the phone down. Get on, you dickhead. And my colleague said, you'll get fired. I said, no, I won't. He won't tell anybody. Bullies don't tell anybody. And he didn't? No, he didn't. And a couple of weeks later, he was all sweetness and light as if nothing had happened. How amazing. Do you think he genuinely was the Queen's favorite son? No. Really? No, no, I don't believe that for a moment. It came about, really, because Andrew was always the one pushing himself up front. It was always me, me, me. And if you think back, and you will know what I'm talking about, the balcony appearance at Trooping the Colour, he was always up front. His place was not up front. And his place was not next to his mother. If anything, it was next to his brother, to the right of his brother. But he always pushed himself up front. If anybody talks about a favourite, I would put Edward as a favourite, because Edward was always the quiet one, but always the one that did things methodically and did things quietly. But this myth has become fact, and it will continue to be so. And how do you think the Palace has handled the Andrew situation from a PR perspective? If you were in the Communications Office at Buckingham Palace now, and you get the call saying, as many of them did, Andrew's been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, obviously he denies all the allegations against him. What would you have done in that situation? Have they handled it good, badly, or well? The King has handled it well. People will ask, why didn't he do it sooner? It's all very easy to say, why didn't he do it sooner? Just strip him of his titles and that's it. But there are all sorts of legal hoops to go through. Not only legal hoops, but government hoops as well, because there were two ways of doing it. Charles did it his way, and his way through letters patent. The other way would have been to do it through government and debate in Parliament, which is what they wanted to avoid. Parliament's got enough issues to deal with without having to bother about the royal family and taking titles away. So he did do it the right way, and it was done at the right time. Now he's an outcast, he's stuck out on the Sandringham Estate, and he will be there forever and a day. How do you feel on events like Truth in the Colour, because now they don't allow the working royals, the non-working royals, sorry, on the balcony really to avoid the problem with the Duke of Suffolk and Jim Mountbatten. How do you feel about Beatrice and Eugenie, for instance, not being allowed? Well, it's interesting you bring that up, because that first came about at the time of the Diamond Jubilee, that it was working royals on the palace balcony, and they've just carried it through, and people haven't noticed. They seem to think that it happened as a result of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being sort of cast out. But no, Diamond Jubilee is when it first happened in 2012, and it actually works, and nobody else should be up there, because if they're not working royals, they shouldn't be there. And you talk about the Sussexes, they're never going to be working royals. King's made that very clear. The Queen made it very clear in 2020. He reiterated, beginning of last week, with a letter out, and he's done the right thing. Harry probably came back thinking, the red carpet's going to roll out, you'll be able to twist his dad round his little finger to get back into the fold. It ain't going to happen. Well, it hasn't quite worked out like that, has it? I mean, let's explore the Sussexes. I mean, my head has exploded over the last week. I mean, I've only been back a couple of weeks. I'm surprised you're looking so well on it. Thank you. It's makeup and foundation, probably, rather than sleep. Nonetheless, Prince Harry and his team appear to have briefed quite a lot to private outlets about... They've always briefed, haven't they? Yes, but specifically about security. Why do we need to know that they have taken the children out of one school after two days, the reason for it, and then the fact they've been put in a new school? Why have they done that? Well, look, just take Harry, what he has said. When he left in 2020, he said, the flight of freedom. They're turning their back on the royal family. They're getting out of England. They're getting away from the press. They want privacy. They want to be financially independent. Okay, so they made a lot of money out there. A lot of people fell for them, and they did make money. If you are so concerned about security, you don't talk about what you are doing and where you are going. You don't say anything. But unfortunately, Harry, he's not well-endowed with brains, actually. Yes, he flew a helicopter, and he did it extremely well, but he's not streetwise. And given his book Spare, where he talked about killing 25 Taliban, well, he virtually put a target on his back. And to leave the UK and then say, I'm not coming back to the UK because it's not a safe country. What does he do? He comes back to the UK, not just on his own, but with his family. So he actually doesn't know what he's doing, and he's got a team that are driving him. I'm not sure who this team are, but there's a team that obviously don't know the workings of the royal family and think that they can write roughshod. But the royals have been around as an institution for, as you said at the beginning, a thousand years, and they had all sorts of battles, and they survived those battles. You see, what I've noticed is that the Prince and Princess of Wales and their team have stayed completely out of it, very dignified, continuing with their work, as we've seen over the last week. And yet last week, I think it was the day that Prince George started at Eton, we got into this back and forth briefing war about when Harry was sent the Lord Chamberlain's letter. And that came through sources from the palace. It also came from sources from Harry's camp. So my question is, I feel like I'm getting a repeat of the War of the Waleses from the early 90s, even in the possibly the late 80s as well. Why do you think it's come down to, yes, again, this kind of briefing war? Well, Harry can't stop whinging and whinging that he didn't get notice of this letter until about an hour or 67 minutes beforehand. There's no reason why he should have got that letter because, quite frankly, all the King was doing was reiterating what had been agreed at the Sandringham Summit in January 2020. So he knew everything that was in it. So to say that he should have been informed, no, he shouldn't have been informed. He's not a member of the Parliament. But he is being told, hey, don't forget what we agreed in 2020. Yes. I don't think he got enough notice, do you think? Yeah. He just seems to think that everything is about Harry. He's a whinger-in-chief, which is probably why most of the Americans are backed off because they don't like whingers. They like people to go out and get it done. And this whole debacle over school. What family puts their child in a school that's going to take a 45-minute drive? What family is going to put their child in a school? And if they've got a security thing that they're paying for, but they don't go and recce the route. They don't go and work out how long is it going to take? Is there an escape route? And why do they need a convoy? Diana never had a convoy when she took William and Harry to school at Wetherby in Notting Hill Yard. And these are country roads as well. It's quite dangerous to be going at full speed on one of these convoys. They would say, of course, that they couldn't recce it because the school places were only summer holidays and therefore you wouldn't have had the traffic that you would usually guess on the term time school run. Forward planning, forward thinking. And all they had to do was to get the local force on board and say, look, what is this road like at school, in school time, at regular work time? And they'd be told. And if they want security in this country, the best way to do it is to take on board former protection officers, if indeed they want to work for Sussexes, and I'm not sure they do, but that's the way, I mean, the King did it with Camilla before they got married. If she was being harassed, former protection officers were looking after her. That's a brilliant idea, actually. I didn't think of that. I think some of them may well be former protection officers, but of course, the difference is they can't carry firearms. Yeah, but our police don't carry firearms anyway. Yes, the post protection officers do, but the rank and file of the force don't. Diplomatic protection, they carry firearms. But if they're out on engagement, I'm sure there would always be bespoke security and there would be armed officers around. What do you make of Megan's WhatsApp messages being leaks on this mother's school group, the year free mum's school group, the gossip, the gossip yummy mummies of Cotswolds or whatever? How stupid can you be? If you want privacy, you don't give your phone number out in WhatsApp. And if you're going to do it, do it on a burner phone. For goodness sake, don't do it on your regular phone. They just don't think. It makes you wonder how they survive. Yeah, I was quite struck over the weekend, actually, that she posted a video montage with a Union Jack emoji over the video. So, you know, saying to her followers, this is our life in the UK now. But she's so concerned about privacy. I mean, why? Why do you think she put out that video showing Archie and Lilibet running around in the Cotswolds? I think they're trying to reinforce the fact that they are going to stay. I don't believe they're going to stay for the long term. I think there might be a change after Invictus and after the 30th anniversary of the death of Harry's mother and William's mother. Well, quite possibly. We'll have to see if William and Harriet can actually be in the same room as each other. Well, they were in the same garden as each other for the unveiling of the Diana statue. Probably the last time they were in the same garden as each other for an official event together. They could well be in the same room, but, you know, they don't have to be sitting next to each other. They attended a funeral of a family member, I believe, but they sat completely apart. And if you look at the sort of walk behind the Land Rover for Prince Philip's funeral, Peter Phillips was between the two of them. I have a theory about the Spencers, actually, and I'd like your thoughts on it, Dickie. Diana did her book with Andrew Morton back in the day. We had Harry with Spare. He'd obviously spoken about the fact that he boasted about killing X number of Taliban fighters during the course of that book. He also said, sorry to interrupt, he also said that he was told by a footman or a private secretary that his grandmother had died. His great-grandmother had died and he was an eagle. Actually, he was 700 miles away skiing. Yes, he was. He certainly was. I remember reporting that, actually, at the time the book came out. Why was that in a book, if it's so easily? It was a ghost writer. He obviously wasn't thinking. He probably just gave it away. But Harry wouldn't have fact-checked it. No. He probably wouldn't have even read it. No, we'd have to see the audiobook, of course. Was he assimilating what he was reading, though? Who knows? But anyway, my point was, and speaking of memoirs, we've got this new book next week coming out, of course. Charles Spencer has written a book, Diana Swanton. Four copies have now been stolen from a truck in the Netherlands. It's four copies that have been stolen from a truck in the Netherlands. But there's a running theme here with the Spencer family, isn't there, about doing terrible memoirs? Yes, there is. Firstly, about the four copies, I think it was a put-up job to generate publicity. Because why are you only going to take four copies? Yes, and then the one bookshop that accidentally sold Harry's books early. So it generates a lot of publicity, and people suddenly think, oh, this book's going to be published. You, of course, were working for the Royals in 1997 when Diana lost her life. What's the point of dredging all of this up again now? Charles Spencer has never been a friend of the Royal families. He wasn't always good to his sister. He carries baggage in the same way as Diana carried baggage. They never got over the fact that their mother walked out on their father when Diana was 96 and Charles Spencer was a couple of years younger. In fact, the mother took the two of them, but Johnny Spencer fought custody and got custody of them. But they carried that baggage through life. Charles Spencer wasn't always good to his sister. I remember it was about 95, 96. It was after the separation. Diana was getting hassled constantly by the media, and she was looking for a bolt hole. And you've got to remember that Diana only lived at Kensington Palace. She didn't have any other property. And she asked her brother, could she use a cottage on the estate just to catch her breath and get some freedom? And initially he said yes, and then he said no, because he was worried about media intrusion. And she never forgave him for that. I'm not sure that they spoke even before she died. I don't think he'll mention that in the book. And he was in South Africa, wasn't he? He was in South Africa at the time of her death, and the earliest he could have got back is on the Monday. The Daily Mail, who were serialising next week, said, shock. I wonder what sort of shock. Yeah, we were shocked by his eulogy in Westminster Abbey, but I'm not sure what else he can actually say. What was Queen Elizabeth's reaction to that eulogy? Because it's been reported on that she was quite hurt by it. But you would have seen her up close and personal. How did she react? She didn't react there. There would have been no reaction at all on her face. There would be no reaction by any of them. But she would have been angry when she got back to the palace. She might have sort of thrown things around. I doubt it. But she would have been certainly very angry that that had happened. In such a place, if he was angry, then he should have chosen a different place to do it. But not in Westminster Abbey at his sister's funeral. I'd like to end, Dickie, actually, speaking of Diana's death. A moment between you and the late Queen, perhaps showing a little bit of vulnerability. And you write about it in the book. And it's after the Queen returned from Balmoral to see the flowers laid outside Buckingham Palace and speaking to some of the mourners. And you spoke to Her Majesty inside the palace straight after that moment, didn't you? Well, I spoke to her after she had left the pen. We'd set up an open space for her to view the floral tributes. Incidentally, both at St James's Palace and Buckingham Palace, she had applause when she arrived and applause when she left. So the media hadn't got it strictly right. And on the way out, she passed an 11-year-old girl who had some roses or coronations. They were red. And she said, can I put those down for you? And the little girl said, no, man, these are for you. And as she walked out, I walked alongside her. And we were apprehensive, given all the sort of bad press, the vicious press in the previous few days. And she said, was that OK? I said, yes, ma'am, that was fine. And then I walked her to the car and she went in to prepare for her tribute, which she did live with the French doors open. It was applause out in the precincts from people who had actually watched it on television that filtered through and down the television microphones into people's homes. So if there was any cause for redemption, that was it. But she didn't have to redeem herself because she did everything according to her script. Her script was stay at Balmoral, only time in her life that she put family above duty with her grandsons. Return to London on Friday, do a walkabout, pay tribute, go to the funeral on Saturday. And GB News viewers and listeners can read much more about this in On Duty With The Royals, which is out now. Tiki, thank you for joining us. Thank you.