Prince Charles reportedly has a list of outrageous royal demands for his servants, from ironed shoelaces to making sure water temperature is always perfect, according to a documentary.
“Everything is done for him,” Paul Burrell, a former butler for the late Princess Diana, said in the documentary Serving The Royals: Inside The Firm, reports Yahoo! Lifestyle. “His pyjamas are pressed every morning, his shoe laces are pressed flat with an iron, the bath plug has to be in a certain position, and the water temperature has to be just tepid.”
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Burrell also claims Prince Charles has valets “squeeze one inch of toothpaste onto his toothbrush every morning.”
“On one occasion, he rang me from his library and he said, ‘Oh Paul, a letter from the Queen seems to have fallen into my wastepaper bin. Would you pick it out?’” Burrell claims in the documentary.
The documentary recently surfaced on Amazon Prime and is directed by John Curtin. It first aired on Canada’s CBC in January 2013.
According to Yahoo, others have documented Charles’ often bizarre requests. In Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion And Defiance Of Prince Charles, author Tom Bowers spoke to one person who claimed Charles will have an aide deliver his own food when he visits a friend’s house. The book also claims he brings his own toilet seat with him wherever he goes and he changes his clothes five times a day.
In December 2015, The Independent reported that Charles will only speak to the media if they sign a 15-page contract that gives Clarence House the right to view first cuts of interviews. If the prince is not happy with the final product, he can bar the interview from being aired. The news came to light after Channel 4 cancelled an interview with Charles ahead of climate change talks in Paris.
According to The Independent, the contract demands broadcasters only ask Charles questions approved by Clarence House before the interview is filmed. The outlet reported that contracts are customized for each interview.
“The issuing of broadcast contracts is standard practice across the royal households,” a spokesperson for Charles said at the time. “All broadcasters who enter into them are keen to ensure that they do not breach any of the relevant broadcast rules and go to great lengths to protect their independence in this regard. The contracts are put in place to ensure factual accuracy and protect the broadcaster as well as the interview subject.”
A more recent documentary, Queen of the World, claimed it takes an hour to iron a single bed sheet for the British Royal Family to make sure they do not have creases, even when they travel.
“There are special sheets that are used for members of the royal family and they’re kept aside and brought out on only those special occasions when they’re here,” master of the household, Christine MacIntyre, said in the special. “It takes over an hour to iron one sheet… After a long day of travelling there’s nothing better than getting into a bed that doesn’t feel like a hotel bed.”
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