Paul Burrell served Queen Elizabeth II for 11 years (Image: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images)
A former royal butler has revealed the moment he managed to win over the late
, best known for being a butler and good friend to the late Princess Diana, worked for the late Queen for 11 years before moving on to serve the-then Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
While Paul must have been good at the job to stay in it so long, he confessed that he used one tactic to win over the late Queen’s corgis, which ended up really impressing Queen Elizabeth herself.
Before a meeting with the monarch a year after he was first recruited as a staff member at the Palace, Paul said he hid sausages in his pockets to win over the affection of the monarch’s dogs.
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’.”
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He continued: “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.
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Paul Burrell later worked for Princess Diana and King Charles, who was Prince Charles at the time (Image: Antony Jones/UK Press via Getty Images)
“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.”
After working for the late Queen for 11 years, Paul then worked closely with Charles and Diana, and formed a very close relationship with the Princess.
He worked with Diana for around a decade and was believed to be one of her closest confidantes.
Speaking about Diana recently, Paul said he believes to “take care” of him.