‘I honestly believe that what she is trying to say is, she wants other people that are suffering with cancer to know that she is there to support them. She’s there to say that she can look them in the eyes and say “I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I’m getting through it”.
‘Uncut Version’ of Kate Middleton and Prince William Podcast Interview ‘Would Have Blown Public Away,’ Mike Tindall Says
Mike Tindall, who is married to Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall, hosted the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Princess Royal on his podcast last year
Mike Tindall wants to clear up a few misconceptions about what the royal family is really like behind closed doors.
The former England rugby standout and husband of Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall has a book out Oct. 24, The Good, the Bad & the Rugby — Unleashed, which he wrote with Alex Payne and James Haskell, his podcast co-hosts. (Their show is similarly titled The Good, the Bad & the Rugby, minus the “unleashed.”) The podcast has hosted the Princess Royal, 74 (Mike’s mother-in-law) as well as Prince William and Kate Middleton, who taped an episode of the show in September 2023 at Windsor Castle, and the book highlights some of the show’s best interviews.
Writing specifically about the Prince and Princess of Wales, both 42, Mike wrote, “I think the podcast humanized them a little bit, and I kind of wish they’d let us put the uncut version out, because it would have blown the public away.”
“They came across as down-to-earth, fully engaged, funny and knowledgeable,” he wrote in the book, as excerpted in the Daily Mail. “It was a far more enlightening chat than I expected, not because I thought they’d be dull (I already knew that they weren’t) but because I know how everything to do with the royal family is so carefully controlled.”
Mike, 46, is not a working member of the royal family, but he certainly knows what the family is like in private — and wrote, per the Daily Mail, that the experience of being royal is nothing like Downton Abbey.
They “are a very close family who loved each other dearly,” Mike said, and described relaxed picnic lunches and watching television with the late Queen Elizabeth — not “meals on long tables and everyone dressed in their finery every night.”
“Zara and I would often watch the racing with her [Queen Elizabeth] on TV, as I’m sure lots of people reading this have done with their Gran,” Mike said. “Lunches were also relaxed, especially up in Scotland, where lunch would often be heading out into the open space of the Scottish Highlands for a picnic.”
Balmoral, a beloved late summer getaway for the Queen and the rest of the royal family, is where Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022 at age 96.
“There’s a great picture of my daughter Mia sitting with the Duke of Edinburgh that captures exactly what those afternoons were like: members of a very close family who loved each other dearly spending precious time together.”
The photo shows Prince Philip, who died at 99 years old in April 2021, and Mia, now 10, sitting outside a log cabin in front of a wooden table, ready to enjoy a meal.
As for Philip’s wife of over 73 years, the late Queen Elizabeth, Mike wrote, “I’m sometimes asked if the Queen did informality like ‘normal’ people, and the answer to that is yes. Her life wasn’t like an episode of Downton Abbey.”
Mike explained in an episode of The Good, the Bad & the Rugby that he met the late monarch when he was just 13 years old, after she visited his school in Yorkshire in 1992 — a moment he does “remember very well.”
“I think I met her in biology,” he said — and might have even foretold his romantic future when doing so.
“Not entirely sure whether I said to her then that I would marry Zara,” Mike continued. “It might have come out my mouth. I’m not entirely sure.”
Speaking of the gravity of difficult situations, after the late Queen died in September 2022, Mike said, “A 96-year-old lady, you know it’s going to happen, but you’re never ready for when it does.” He continued, “I also have loads of regrets about not asking her so many more things … Having nervousness when you sit there, get that lucky seat of being sat next to her.”
He added, “It’s like the world has lost its grandmother in some way.”