The Royals with Roya and Kate - A hug from Kate

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

A poignant image emerged this week: The Princess of Wales, recovering from cancer, in an embrace with Liz Hatton, a teen battling the same disease, which came after a bucket list item was crossed off for the young photographer. That, and William and Harry's intriguingly similar diaries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Royals with me, Roya Nikar, and you, Kate Mancy. Roya. Kate. You know, this week feels different. It definitely does feel different. This is different. Because you're not gazing lovingly into your eyes across the table. Just over the computer. I've gone on manoeuvres. You have gone on manoeuvres. I was speaking to you from Ripon Cathedral where the Dean has so kindly taken me in, Dean John Dobson,

and let me use his wi-fi. Thank you John Dobson. He's great. I've also got a cup of tea here so I'm absolutely thrilled. But I came up here to meet Liz Hatton who as you will know is the 17 year old who met the Prince and Princess of Wales earlier this week at Windsor Castle when she was invited to go and photograph the investiture. Now that was the main reason she was there. The backstory of course is that she is very terribly sad story that she is terminally ill with a very rare and aggressive form of cancer and And has this bucket list, which her mum helped her draw up

of all the things she wanted to achieve in the short time that she has left available. And one of the things that she wanted to do was be published in, have a picture published in a national newspaper and in magazines and such like. And she has taken these most amazing pictures today of Rippon Cathedral and its stained

glass window and all the flowers inside, which has been quite extraordinary to see her in action. I mean, bear in mind, she turned 17 in August. She looks and acts so much older, so much wiser, and she's clearly got a huge talent. But it's been, yeah, I mean, it's been a rollercoaster week for royal correspondence. It yeah, I mean, it's been a rollercoaster week for Royal Correspondence. It's been a, certainly been a rollercoaster week for her because we saw her with that picture hugging the Princess of Wales. And it was quite a, it was quite a thing, wasn't it?

It was, this picture we got, it came very late. We got very late notice of it on Tuesday, and it was very- Wednesday, I think, it was very, feels like a long week. Oh God, it has been a long week. And it was this very striking photo and a heads up from Kensington Palace that Prince William had been doing the investiture that day, which had made lots of news because he'd had some Mark Cavendish and Ali McQuist and lots of people from the sporting world. But then Kensington Palace told us that actually what he'd also done was he'd invited Liz to Windsor Castle.

He had invited her to come and photograph some of the kind of people getting their restructures in a very sort of close up format. And then what she hadn't realized, I mean, that would have been enough for her bucket list, because she, you know, she was very keen to do things like that. That William and Catherine wanted to meet with her afterwards, and so met with her and her mom and her brother Matteo. And these two lovely photos dropped, didn't they, of Catherine hugging Liz, and then her standing with the Prince and Princess of Wales and her family and this lovely message from William and Kate saying how lovely it was to meet you and how Liz's creativity had inspired them and her story so they'd had this extraordinary meeting where by all the cause and purposes actually what what they talked about was more photography rather than the illness. Yeah that's what she said. Which is so nice.

And she didn't know she was going to meet them because I think they wanted to put her at ease. So she didn't think that she was going to meet them, but Matteo, her eight-year-old brother, said, oh yes, we'll definitely get to meet the prince. And she said, well no, that's not the deal. The deal is I'm there to photograph the investitures, which actually is a big,

it may not seem it to people who don't know, but that's a huge deal because even press association photographers aren't allowed in, we have to do it, those pictures are sort of taken remotely. So for her to be in there, in that room, when those awards are being given was a huge honor. And then to be sort of tapped on the shoulder and taken to a room where she then met Kate and William,

you know, she just said they were so funny and nice and normal, made them all feel hugely at ease and that she was just blown away by the whole thing. I mean, this is a teenager who this time last year was going about her A levels, had only been off sick once in her life with chicken pox. And then all of a sudden had this kind of whiplash moment when she was diagnosed with cancer and obviously that's something that the Princess of Wales can relate to this idea of being that she's come through her own cancer which was only when she found out that she's

finished her chemotherapy. Sadly the prognosis looks far worse for Liz, who is now in the end of life care for her disease. But that gave her such a feel-up, and her mum was saying to me that actually having, being invited to do that has given her so much confidence, the fact that not only was she invited in to do that, but the fact that Prince and Princess of Wales then use those images on their own social media and put them out there.

And actually when they dropped, we didn't know they were taken from her. And then the second image came of Kate hugging Liz and the story kind of unfolded. But that has given us such a huge boost. And her mum says when she's got the camera around her neck, she's really confident. She's actually quite a shy person

and she sort of sat down afterwards. And you wouldn't know from looking at her initially that she's ill but she is but yeah she even taking the photographs today did make her very tired but she's got she's on these brilliant meds that help her deal with the pain but she's in constant pain now so I think such an incredible thing for Prince and Princess of Wales to have done, that's certainly the family's point of view anyway. Well, it was, I think the other thing to sort of say is it was interesting that it was done privately. So it wasn't termed an engagement. A lot of people, a lot of the coverage sort of said this is an engagement for her,

but actually that Kensington Palace was very clear to say it didn't appear in the court circular as an official meeting. So it was done sort done away from the press, away from the media, away from reporters. Nice to see, I think, Catherine starting to emerge and do more. And clearly, as Liz Hatton and her family have said, it was just an extraordinary experience. And it's led to so many other things for her, all these sort of special memories that she's making with her family since. So yeah, I think that was a rather lovely, interesting. You're calling the Princess Catherine today,

I noticed, Roya. I'll be switching to Kate later. Don't you worry. Keep you on your toes. The great Kate debate rolls on. Kate debate. Oh, the Twittersphere has been alive with it. It has. So that was a story that obviously is still rumbling now. So that was huge. It's huge. The evening the pictures dropped, the message from William and Kate dropped. Kate. People are still writing about it now. Big news. And it got me thinking,

why do some stories make so much news and why do other stories make less news? For instance, I think it was, you know, we had the King this week busting some moves, dancing away with the Samoans. Wasn't he at Buckingham Palace? And that was much more of a picture capture. Motsu Mabusi from Strictly was there with Craig Redwell-Hawood. But they were no match for the King because he had some moves of his own. Well, he did, although it was interesting, you know, at the moment we're getting sort of weeks where we have very tightly packed schedules engagements and lots of members of the Royal Family at the same time.

So you have William and Kate doing that meeting with Liz Hatton, you have the King at Buckingham Palace for a Commonwealth reception, you have Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh doing another engagement and then you have the news announced and we'll get into it later, but you also have Beatrice announcing that she's pregnant, all sort of clashing within like 24 hours of each other. And I was just thinking, that used to really annoy back in the day, it used to rub up some of the members of the Royal Family the wrong way.

You mean that one household would be annoyed that the other household was trying to steal, they would worry that they were trying to steal their thunder on purpose, you mean? There was always a lot of like, a lot of focus put on the grid, wasn't there, to not sort of overlap each other. Whereas now don't overshadow the senior members higher up the ranks. Yes, it used to be. I sense a slight less irritation among the households when those clashes happen now. So, you know, I think there's that

they're more sanguine about sometimes even when the king is busting some moves with the Samoans, that's not going to make as much news as, you know, Kate coming out and hugging another fellow council sufferer. Yes, I think there is, I agree that I think there's a sense that they do that you're hardly going to compete with a princess who's been away for so long and then comes back and does something because the motive is that and and announces that on social media. However, I would say, I don't think they used to be focused on the grid, definitely,

but I'm not sure even that grid is fluid now, it seems to me, because I'm not sure how much they're telling the other households about what they're doing. I'm not sure whether they say, I mean, maybe just do it just in advance, but in terms of long-term panning, I don't get the impression, for example, that they're always talking to each other. There was a briefing, I think, that got changed because, let's say, one side didn't realise that the other side, the timings of the tour and things like that. So I'm not sure whether, how much kind of synchronicity there is between it. But yeah, I don't think they're, I don't think that I think they're more stoic to the fact that the Walsers are going to get great publicity and actually pleased about it probably. And in terms of what makes news for us in a week like this, what you

know, this is a perfect example of that. Princess Beatrice, which we'll get into, announced that she's having her second baby, she's pregnant with second baby, at a time when William had what should have been three engagements in a day, one got cancelled because of the weather, two big engagements that he was doing, one with London Air Ambulance, you know, and the new helicopters and David Beckham, and then another one about the Earthshot Prize and tires, we're going to talk about them more. But Beatrice's news did in a lot of papers make more coverage than William's engagements. And it's just interesting. I kind of looked at that coverage and thought, interesting. We were expecting...

Is that because it was very happy news? I think, yeah, I think happy news in a week in which there's a lot of miserable news around and news editors and editors will be looking at that mix as we always talk about in print and online of you know the light and the shade the happy stories so it's not to completely make all the readers completely miserable with some of the world affairs that are going on at the moment but the the baby news is was was a Philip wasn't it I think when we both started this podcast you know there were lots of discussions about how it might work

and how it would develop and things like that. But the one thing neither of us had to worry about was whether we'd have enough to talk about every week. And so it's proved because there's always something going on like any family, there's always this huge news. It was nice to hear that Princess Beatrice is expecting her second child. And the way they did it was quite interesting as well.

The statement came out of Buckingham Palace, the family photos, and very much including Wolfie in that as well. So the stepson that Beatrice has from Edomupele Motsu, her husband, from a previous relationship, the eight-year-old Wolfie, and he was best man at their wedding, wasn't he, at Royal Lodge when they had their kind of slim down. The blended family is all the thing now, isn't it? Because the Queen made such a big deal of having her her step grandchildren, her grandchildren and the King's step grandchildren involved in the coronation and the King was, you know, very pleased to have them there. And it brought to the fall

that, you know, the King and Queen have blended families. And so do other members of the royal family. Yeah. And mirroring society itself. There's a nice line about that. Times change. They do. There was a nice line about the Queen's stepchildren this week

in an interview that Tom Parker Bowles, the Queen's son, gave. And he gave it, I have to say, to another podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to plug it. In the interview, Tom Parker Bowles said that, you know, he still calls Charles Sir and has done for years and is never going to change. Calling his stepdad Sir. But his children call him Upper, which is quite sweet. It's just a kind of childhood toddlerish nickname they made up for him.

And it's sort of stuck and they go, oh, hi, Upper. And he's there sort of bowing and going hello sir. So by William and Kate's kids Charlotte, George and Louie call him Grandpa Wales which is sweet they say upper and Grandpa Wales better than lower isn't it? Upper's better than lower. It's UPPA I think because I heard it and had to go and check. Yeah, I like it. Anyway, new royal baby coming in the spring, 12th and line to the throne. Oh no, it sounds like you're announcing a new movie coming next spring.

Next spring, a new royal baby who'll be 11th and line to the throne. Bumping usually down to 12th, but I think she'll cope with that. I think she'll live with that. Is that the clock going in the deniery? It is. It must be time for tea. And on that note, let's have a cup of tea. Now, before the break,

we were discussing the Princess of Wales' Week. Her husband's been quite busy as well, hasn't he, Roya? He has, Wales' Week. Wales' Week. It's a new segment. He has, he's been reunited with his football buddy David Beckham hasn't he? They were besties. They were they were hanging out at RAF Northolt on a very wet and windy day that should have then gone on to the Royal London Hospital where I should have been covering that engagement but sadly it was cancelled

due to bad weather. So this was all to do with Williams' patronage of London Air Ambulance and the very successful fundraising appeal they had, which raised £16 million to help buy these two new H135 helicopters because the old fleet were just getting beyond beyond their sort of service, weren't they, their life service. And David Beckham appeared because he'd been fundamental in helping, you know, raise funds. Yeah, so William behind the scenes had got David Beckham involved, hadn't he? So he sort of got him involved and he became the front of this amaze appeal. So this is the thing where you buy basically a lottery ticket and you can, and you can have a chance of winning this, you know,

amazing luxury house. And then some of that lottery money goes towards charitable endeavour. So four million of that appeal went towards this 16 million that was raised for these two London air ambulances. And apparently William was instrumental in bringing Beckham in as he will be hoping his knighthood gets that, you know, it's tantalizingly close now, isn't it? Oh wow, there was a lot of chatter on the airwaves away from the helicopters about that,

but I think William was a little bit sad because although they got into the cockpit and had a little bit of a play about inside the helicopter, he was supposed to have flown it from RAF Norfolk It was, that would have been great to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel because of course, very close to his heart, he's patron of the London Air Ambulance,

he was an Air Ambulance helicopter pilot for East Anglian Air Ambulance and before that he was an RAF, Search and Rescue helicopter pilot, so he likes to keep his flying up. One of the things he wrote on the side, wasn't it, ball in the middle? Which, you know,

Which wasn't anything to do with football. I know how to speak to the London Air Ambulance, to one of their pilots to find out what he actually meant by that. But it's when you're flying the helicopter, there's like a ball in the middle and you have to keep that balanced, apparently, to maintain equilibrium when you're flying the helicopter.

Is it the helicopter version of keep yuppies in football? Yeah, but much more important. Probably not. And then they signed it, didn't they? William, October 2024, and David Beckham put love and a kiss. David, maybe one day, sir, David, who knows, watch the squeeze. Rod Stewart made a joke of that at Buckingham Palace, didn't he? A while back. He did, didn't he?

Said, oh, come on, David, I'm sure your knighthood's on the way now. OK, we'll see. Keep your eyes on that New Year's Honours list. I will. Pencil that in for the diary. The Royal Football theme has continued because he wasn't just high out with former footballers. He he was whizzed his way up to watch Aston Villa's historic victory against Bayern Munich. And quite often you see William go to matches, he sometimes goes with Prince George. He goes sometimes goes with his mates and sometimes you see him like, you know,

slightly pensive, biting his fingernails, looking like not quite getting the results that he always wants. Although, you know, Villa are on a bit of a roll. But this was an amazing one-nil triumph over Bayern Munich. And he looked pretty pleased, didn't he? He looked absolutely delighted, so much so that he lost his voice.

He was so thrilled by it. I mean, he's always going on about the villa, isn't he? Up the villa and, you know, every kind of... Up the villa. So the tweets that had signed off with UTV, up the villa. But he is a genuine fan and he's a genuine sports fan. I think earlier this week he was saying that one of the reasons he didn't, or the main reason he didn't go to the Olympics this year

was because he was worried about bringing Covid home to his wife, who obviously was undergoing chemotherapy at the time. But there's nothing that quite excites William like the football. It's for him, it's what horse racing was for the late queen. It's the thing that he does love it. He loves it gets all really into it. I mean, don't ask me about the tactics because I'm not. People often wonder why on earth he decided to support Villa, because you know, it's not really that near Windsor, it's not really that near Kensington, but he said a few years ago that when he was at school

and all his mates were sporting all the kind of informed teams then, Man United, Chelsea, he wanted to pick a mid-table club who'd give him an emotional roller coaster. And I think it's fair to say the Villa have delivered on that roller coaster ride, particularly when they beat Bayern Munich. Absolutely.

But there was more sport as well this week. There was swimming for William too, wasn't there? Wills' week. Wills' week ended with opening a new community swimming pool in Burtley, which doesn't sound like the most glamorous affair, but he did draw in a few Olympians. He had Tom Dean there and Adam Peaty.

Yes, and I quite liked that it wasn't a glamorous affair and it wasn't one of his kind of set projects and that it was just something that's just a very good idea. And he says he's a keen swimmer himself. And we've heard that the Princess of Wales likes to swim in cold water. As she once said, the colder the better. She's really into it, he's really into it.

But it's just a kind of a general, a great thing for the community. And they put their own money as well, didn't they, from the Royal Foundation? 96, 96,000 pounds has gone into that. So, and he's, you know, you speak to people close to him, they'll say he's behind the scenes, very passionate about community swimming.

Good. And people having access to swimming and how he's seen. And it reminded me actually of going up to Dumfries house to see what the king had done sort of to try and help regenerate the local area and he had helped with the reopening of I think a swimming pool in in Cumnock near Dumfries house and that had given that had sort of brought a whole new lease of life to that community just by you know drawing people in, getting people out, getting people exercise, giving people sort of you know access and it's interesting. It's a less

glamorous side of world engagements but very worthy all the same. And talk about less glamorous, he was getting his hands dirty wasn't he with changing tires as part of the earth shop prize. They weren't though that dirty weren't they? He was all done with a very efficient drill. Tyres, which you wrote about, a very good piece, a very interesting piece about tyres and Uber. I wrote about it with the environment correspondent who knows much more about these things than I do but now emissions from tyres and road dust now exceed emissions that come actually out of the tailpipe, out of what we would call the exhaust pipe. Which I think is quite fascinating, there's six million tons of this stuff from tyres goes around the world,

ends up on Everest, it's been found in the Antarctic apparently. And this guy called Gee, he's known from ENSO, he's one of the Earthshot finalists from last year. He's very cool, he's like this is a slandic guy, he's gonna save the planet. I'm totally on board with him, he's amazing, is a slandic guy. He's going to save the planet. I'm totally on board with him. He's amazing. Follow him to the ends of the earth. Are you switching your tires over? I don't have electric vehicle yet.

Although mostly on the train. So you can only do it on electric vehicles? No, you can't only do it on electric vehicles, but, and here's this interesting thing as well, electric vehicles tend to be heavier. Therefore they wear the tire down faster. Therefore they're creating that pollution that while they don't have as much pollution

from the tailpipe or the exhaust pipe, they are wearing tires down, which means that they are contributing to that plastic from the rubber from the tires into the atmosphere quicker than a standard car, which is why they're targeting electric vehicles with these eco tyres first, because they're going to make the most impact.

We're going to hear much more about that in Cape Town soon for the EarthShot Prize. I'll be there next month. But the Duke of Sussex has sort of beaten William to it. So he's been in South Africa this week and he's been in Lesotho talking about this very thing, talking about how climate innovators can be linked up with big business and it struck me that it was very much singing from the same hymn sheet as William. Earlier that week I went to see him when he came to London for the Well Child Awards. He looked quite nervous actually when he arrived and walked the kind of purple carpet but you know he's helping sick children and young people that's exactly what the

Prince and Princess of Wales have done this week with Liz Hatton who we talked about earlier and obviously there was that tie-in in New York as well wasn't there in September where Harry was out there in person talking about the perils of social media one of William's key things that he's campaigned on, also talking about the planet and environment. William was there virtually, so he delivered a video message in New York to release the names of these Earthshot finalists

for the 2024 awards. And it struck me that they are very much singing from the same hymn sheet. But just in very different, with different sonnets, different music. Yeah, up to a point because they, same locations, same sort of message, they obviously have the same passions that overlap in some ways.

And one of the ironies of course of it all is that they believe both of them, by coming together, they can make the world a better place, solve problems and things like that. But of course that coming together doesn't seem to extend to the brothers themselves. So there's never any, we talked about this last time Harry was over,

but there was never any suggestion in my mind that he would meet William on this trip, this brief trip to London. We did discuss whether he might meet the King. The King was obviously in Scotland. That meeting't happen that didn't take place. Harry was on a mission to fly in fly out and I just think it's in some ways they seem so close together. Africa and New York the same projects and yet miles apart. Do you think they'll ever be reconciled? Do I? Or do you think they will be?

Are you turning it back on me? I don't think any time soon. I don't think, do you know what? As things stand, I hope they will. Never say never, I think we all hope they will, but I think as so many of us know, families are very complicated and the positions are quite entrenched at the moment

and as aligned as their interests are, their personal lives are, like have gone, you know, in very different directions. So it's a shame because it reminds you back at the time when they were working together and, but you know, even then there were always, there was always you know, a little bit of rivalry over the shared interests like conservation and the environment. Yeah, and different rivalry over it and kind of differences of opinion as to how it ought to be carried out. Yeah, but when they came together for things like the Heads Together campaign, it was very successful. Yeah, so they need to get their heads together, maybe one day, we'll see.

There was a nice reminder, wasn't there, this week of the late Queen in Scotland? There was. The King and Queen were up in Scotland visiting the Scottish Parliament to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of the Scottish Parliament. And the King gave a speech and it dropped into my inbox and I read it.

And one thing really leapt off the page when I read it, or should I say leapt off my screen, which was, yes, it's no great surprise to hear the King talk about the importance of Scotland to his family, and he talks about the uniquely special place that Scotland had with the royal family. We've heard William talking about that before,

we heard the late Queen talking about that. We know how much the royal family loved Scotland, they spent so much time there. But what was really interesting to me was that, you know, when he was saying Scotland holds such a special place in our in the hearts of my family, so much so that he said, the Queen, my late mother, chose to spend her final days in the most beloved place, Bale Morall, chose. And I thought that was so interesting because it was the first time we had heard the King suggest that the Queen made an active decision to end

her days in Scotland or that she knew her life would end there. And there was something very very poignant about hearing him say that because of course you know last year we'd heard Princess Anne say publicly, yeah I was about to say Princess Anne talk in that DVD documentary. Princess Anne said that the Queen was worried about, she had concerns about being dying. Logistically, it could be more complicated. That it might be more trouble for everybody if she died in Scotland. But of course there were plans in place, wasn't there?

It was Operation Unicorn, Operation Overstudy to bring the Queen's body back should she die in Scotland. And Princess Anne at the time said, just do what you want to do, don't you know, it's fine. What I thought was interesting about that admission from the King or that sort of slight personal revelation from the King was that at the time, you remember, I remember watching that journey that the Queen's coffin did in the hearse with Princess Anne accompanying her in a car behind, the great beginning of the final journey from Balmoral in Aberdeenshire

to St. Charles's Cathedral in Edinburgh, where she was gonna lie at rest for a vigil before the Queen's Coffin was flown down south to London. There's extraordinary scenes, some of them quite moving of people who wanted to come and say their final goodbye. So there were those 32 tractors that came out and newly washed tractors that sort of did a guard of honor

along the side of the road as her coffin passed through and the horses and their riders that came and stood silently kind of watching her. And there was some discussion at the time and you'll never know, it's very hard to, I suppose, measure this, but there was discussion and coventry at the time that, you know, her death in Scotland and those scenes that we saw possibly strengthened the cause for the Union for a time, because she'd arrived in Scotland and Nicola Sturgeon had, you know, when the Queen arrived in Scotland in July 2022, Nicola Sturgeon had just published her latest roadmap to independence,

and so the issue was very live again. Well, speaking about the person who was always described as the Queen's favourite, rightly or wrongly, was Duchess of Edinburgh, who has been everywhere recently. She wrote a piece last week totting up her engagements in September compared to the same period the year before and it was double now Let's see by the end of the year whether it's it's a massive uplift on the previous year But certainly September was it's been extremely busy She went to Tanzania as we discussed was discussed previously

We've had news today that next week. She's going to be on CBB's reading the bedtime story. Normally that's Fergie's Specs specs for her she's gonna reading Spex for X wearing her glasses, isn't she? When it's a story about a little boy who learns to love his glasses, because Sophie is an ambassador, a global ambassador for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness. And so she's reading this story for CBB's and we've seen the pictures of her proudly wearing her glasses. Next week we'll see her in Malta. Yes.

With the Duke of Edinburgh. Yes, of course. And there are lots of high profile things that she's been doing and continues to do. And more interesting foreign trips coming up for her. Yes, indeed. Watch this space. Indeed. And new patron of the Girl Guides, which was a role that the Queen held since 1953,

which the late Queen I should say. Yes, that's a lovely bit of continuity there. And she was a Brownie. Were you a Brownie? I was a Brownie. Were you a Brownie? I was not Brownie. I was busy with the pony club.

Dib, dib, dib, dub, dub, dub. Promise that I'll do my best. Yeah, whatever. As you have done, Kate dob. Promise that I'll do my best. Yeah, whatever. As you have done, Kate, as you have continued to do. Right. Well, bye bye, Rippon. Yeah. Lovely to see you down the line.

I know, I wanted to stay here for the weekend, but I've already probably outstayed my welcome. You've been so kind to me. It was a real pleasure and a privilege to meet Liz Hatton, I have to say, and extremely moving to speak to her and her family. It was a genuine boost to her, what the Prince and Princess of Wales did this week,

and I think that's... That's what that, that's part of the, very important part of that role, isn't it? Absolutely. Very important part of that role. So all the best to her. All the best to her, and divdiv, divdiv. See you in person next time, hopefully.

See you next week. Catch you soon. Bye.