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A former Royal footman has revealed that a mishap once left the Queen in the dark, a far cry from her status as one of the most famous people in the world who has a team dedicated to her care. Steven Kaye has shared his experiences of working with royalty, in an exclusive interview with Slingo, reports The Mirror.
He worked for the Queen for three-and-a-half years after a documentary inspired him to personally write to the long-serving monarch to inquire about a role among the Royal Staff. As with any profession, things do go wrong – though one occasion particularly sticks out for Kaye.
“These sorts of things do happen quite a lot, with any job where there has to be perfection, there’s always going to be a lot of mistakes,” he remarked, adding that the Queen is pretty tolerant so long as errors are corrected quickly. “She doesn’t like sloppiness, so given that it’s an accident and not deliberate, she’s usually OK.”
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Kaye continued: “There was one occasion where the under-butler had forgotten to put candles out on the dining table. As it so happened, for some bizarre reason in the dining room at Windsor, the lights were flickering on and off, so the Queen ordered that the lights be turned off and we’d just have candlelight – well, there were no candles.
“We were then running down to one of the pantries to find some candles and bring them up while the Queen was virtually sitting in the dark.”
Of the documentary which inspired his royal journey, Kaye said: “There was a documentary on TV and it was the first documentary that had ever aired about life inside the palace, it was like a backstage tour. I was absolutely fascinated because we’d never seen anything like that before, the state rooms hadn’t even been opened by then.
“I thought, I’m just going to send a letter to the palace and apply, see if I get a reply – I didn’t think I would – so I wrote to the Queen and said how much I enjoyed the documentary and how might a person gain entry into Royal service. I was in two minds about whether to post it, but a few weeks later a letter came through the door with the Queen’s crest and stamp on. I thought it would be a thank you, but no thank you.
“I opened up the letter and it said we’re interested in meeting you. I rang this number and arranged to go down to Buckingham Palace and have what they described as an ‘informal meeting’. The only question asked that was kind of formal was whether I was a Royalist or not – obviously, I am.
“I was shaking like a leaf all day, went home on the train thinking there was no way on earth I was going to get a job there and they rang me a day later and said we’d like to offer you two positions; the role of a footman or the role of an under-butler. The footmen are a little more senior, an under-butler is literally looking after the silver or the glass, you don’t get to travel around much and you don’t get to see the Royals much.”
Once Kaye learned he would be joining the ranks, he started readying himself to move into Buckingham Palace – “which nothing can prepare you for”.
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