Queen’s stud groom reveals joke that made Prince Philip go on tirade

One of the Queen’s dearest members of staff has revealed how he once dared answer back to Prince Philip with a joke – leading the royal to explode with a multilingual X-rated tirade which left Elizabeth shocked.

Terry Pendry was Stud Groom at the Royal Mews in Windsor, looking after the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh‘s horses for 28 years and regularly riding with the Queen up to her final months.

He said Philip and his four children could all show their anger, but he praised them for their ability to quickly forgive and forget and not bear grudges – saying they are only human like everyone else.

But in all his time serving the Queen – for many of those years alone with her and on a daily basis – he said he never put his foot in it with her.

But now he has told for the first time how he made a dreadful error with Philip after the Queen had given him permission to cut back the hair on her beloved pony Emma.

The Queen acquired the black fell pony as she became more frail around 20 years before her death in 2022 aged 96.

Speaking now about the one occasion he incurred the royal wrath, Mr Pendry, 74, recalled in an interview with Gyles Brandreth: ‘I was out with Her Majesty. We have a tunnel when we come back out of the park (Windsor) to come into the stables.

‘I’d asked Her Majesty whether I could take the belly out of her pony in the winter – clipping, when you take a very low trace clip.

‘Her pony Emma in those days, in the winter months, would grow a very, very thick coat and she could get a bit sweaty. And it was an awful job trying to get her dry and keep her clean for grooming.

‘I said ‘Look, we’re not going to show this pony anymore, do you mind if I take her tummy out and a little bit of her neck which would help the groom?’

‘No I don’t mind’, she said. So I duly did that.

‘A couple of days later – we used to call him ‘The Old Man’, the Duke of Edinburgh – he must have had a bad drive on his ponies and came walking up through the corridor.

‘The Queen was on her pony, I was on mine. He said ‘You’ve clipped that bloody pony’.

‘I said ‘That’s blatantly obvious Your Royal Highness’. And the Queen just looked at me.’

Pendry, speaking on the Rosebud podcast, continued: ‘He said ‘You should be put up against a wall and bloody well shot – you don’t clip native ponies’.

‘I said ‘Your Royal Highness, I’d rather you’d keep your cartridges for pheasants and partridges – Pendrys are out of season’.’

Immediately the Queen knew Terry had overstepped the line with her husband.

Pendry continued: ‘The Queen’s eyes went as big as an owl, ‘you shouldn’t have said that’ she said. And she rode off and left me.

‘He went mental. Some of it was in German, some of it was in Dutch, some of it was in Greek, some of it was in English, but everyone was a swear word.

‘I stood my ground, and I took my punishment. I thought he was going to pull me off the pony, but he didn’t.’

But Terry says that on reflection he came to realise he was in the wrong answering back the way he did – while commending the royal family on their straight talking and ability to forgive and forget.

He said: ‘It was like switching on and off a light bulb. I think it’s in all of them. All the children are a little bit the same.

‘They can show their anger and it’s just letting off steam – they’re humans, the same as you and I.

‘But you know what, they don’t bear grudges.

‘They say what they say, they say what they mean, but then it’s done, it’s forgotten about.

‘You get on with the rest of your life.

‘I met with His Royal Highness the next day and he was perfectly OK.

‘But I dared that day to stand my ground. It just slipped off my tongue.

‘I can’t repeat over the microphone some of the words, but it was a man’s telling off.

‘I deserved it too, by the way. I was rude. I shouldn’t have said what I said. Would I dare say I was arrogant to him or rude to him? Maybe I was. So I deserved it.’