Royal butler Paul Burrell, had a sneaky trick up his sleeve, er, in his pocket, during a meeting with the late Queen, which got him onside with the Monarch and her 10 dogs
Royal butler Paul Burrell convinced the late Queen Elizabeth to make him her footman by hiding sausages in his pocket.
Burrell, who served the Queen for eleven years before going on to work for Charles and Diana, said the Queen warmed to him because her beloved corgis liked him. But he has confessed he hid the meaty treats in his pocket when she asked to have a meeting with him a year after he started working at Buckingham Palace.
He said: “That morning in the staff canteen we had sausages for breakfast. I wrapped two up in a paper napkin and put them into my tailcoat pocket. I thought ‘she’s got dogs’.
“Went upstairs, knocked on the door, she said ‘Come in’.
“She said ‘You’re Paul’. I said ‘Yes, Your Majesty’, and I bowed. She said ‘Do you like dogs?’
“I said ‘I love dogs’. She said ‘Well let’s see if they like you’. So she handed me all the leashes.
“‘This is Smoky, this is Shadow, this is Piper, this is Chipper, this is Jolly, this is Socks. I thought ‘Oh my goodness, I’m never going to remember all these names’. There were nine corgis and the labrador Jade. So ten dogs altogether.
“I go down to the garden entrance. I thought ‘I’m going to take them all of the leads and I’ll run across the lawns and they’ll follow me’. And they did, because they could smell the sausages.
“So I went behind the greenhouse and gave them all a bit of sausage and then ran back, and I could see the net curtain twitching.
“And when I got back into her room she said ‘that’s quite extraordinary, they do like you – I think I’ll keep you’.
“She kept me for eleven years. What a lovely lady she was.”