A former royal chef who cooked for Princess Diana and her two sons William and Harry when they were young has opened up about Di’s relaxed parenting style and the occasional clash she had with the young princes’ nanny.
Scroll down for video
Darren McGrady cooked for them for four years and also spent 11 years working for the Queen.
The chef revealed that was very easy going when it came do what her boys ate.
“She let them be boys, young boys!,” he told Hello! Online. “There was always a battle between her and Nanny. Nanny would say, ‘No, they’re eating their dinner, they’re having cabbage.”
“And the Princess would say, ‘No, if they’re with me and they want loaded potato skins and fried chicken then they can have that. And if they don’t eat it and they still want pudding, they can have that too!’ She was much more relaxed than Nanny.”
“They could have chocolate, there weren’t special treats because if the boys were home, the Princess wanted to spoil them.”
“They liked comfort food dishes. They loved banana flan, anything with banana really, banana ice cream. They loved things like mixed grills, burgers, pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and cream chicken sauce… They were royal children but they still had children’s palates.”
ut while the little princes ate whatever they pleased, Princess Diana was much stricter with her own diet. She ate mostly chicken, fish or stuffed vegetables and when she was home alone, she’d sometimes eat off a tray in front of the TV!
Darren recalled that Diana opted to have people over for lunch rather than dinner because they went too late into the night.
He added: “And also she said, ‘I can’t invite men back for dinner because the media would find out and then I’m in real trouble. So whenever I do an event or a charity do or have a friend round, I have to have them for lunch.’”
He said that he and the princess got along well and that she loved her sons more than anything.
Darren said: “She absolutely adored the two of them. She would be so thrilled right now with both of them, especially with Harry, with his charity work. He’s his mother’s son; you can see that in the way he acts naturally with young kids. He’s just incredible… We just need to find him a bride now!”
VIDEO: Princess Di with her sons on Will’s first day at Eton
