The Royals with Roya and Kate - Who gets to live in royal palaces — and who pays for it?

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

From palace homes for non-working royals to "peppercorn" rents and subletting arrangements, the fallout from a major royal property investigation continues. This week on The Royals, Kate Mansey and Roya Nikkhah are joined by The Times investigations reporter George Greenwood to examine why the National Audit Office report has struck such a chord. They discuss reports that the King is reviewing Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie’s rent arrangements, and Prince William’s hints at reform when he becomes king. So, what could this mean ahead of the renewal of the Sovereign Grant and a parliamentary inquiry into royal finances? And how much of this stems from the public outcry over Andrew’s Royal Lodge lease?Have a question about royal finances? Get in touch: [e-mail]: GettyProducer: Robert WallaceExecutive Producer: Priyanka DeladiaRead more: Cosy property deals hurt the monarchy - here's how to fix them Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to the Royals, the podcast where we discuss what happens behind the palace walls. I'm Kate Mansy. And I'm Royan Nicar. Who gets to live in a royal palace and who should pay for it? Well, that's the question at the heart of a major new Royal Property Report released last week, in which the fallout is already moving fast. As we reported in the Times last week, the King has already signalled he'll review Princess Beatrice and Eugenie's palace rent arrangements in response to the findings.

And for the Sunday Times, we've learned that William is thinking further ahead as he looks to reform royal property rules when he becomes king. So today, we're going beyond the headlines to ask what this report really reveals about royal property, privilege and public money. And to break it all down for us, we're delighted to be joined by the journalist who helped put these property arrangements in the spotlight. George Greenwood is the investigations reporter for The Times, and George uncovered the pepcorn rent arrangements at Royal Palaces.

George, welcome back to the Royals. It's great to have you back on because it didn't feel very long ago that you and I were talking about this very subject, and you had been digging away very successfully, I should say, at various lease arrangements, property arrangements, Crown Estate, trying to sort of pick away at the transparency issue. Some things were being obfuscated, others weren't. Tell us what you found.

and how we got to hear with this NAA report. This week was triggered by the Ferre at the end of last year around the Royal Property Arrangements around the former Prince Andrew. He had been granted in the early 2000s, what appears to be a very generous lease arrangement with the Crown Estate for the lease of Royal Lodge. Under that, he had to pay around £8.5 million for the refurbishment and a payment for the property.

but in exchange for that initial payment for a rather palatial estate, he did not have to pay any ongoing rent. At the time that he was in the storm of allegations around his links to the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and this story contributed to this sort of wave of outrage that eventually got the palace to force him out of Royal Lodge and moving him to the king's private estate in Sandringham, following that initial story, there were further issues around those royal leases, one being Prince Edward, who has a lease on another Crown Estate property at Bagshot Park. And a similar deal, isn't it?

And a very similar deal. Multi-million pound outlay at the start. And then, as you've revealed, Sir Peppercorn, if demanded, a pepper corn in rent every year. We should of course say, before we go any further as we keep having to, that although Andrew has been arrested and released under suspicion of Ms. Connick and Public Office, he denies all wrongdoing. George, can you just highlight the key new findings that came out of this NAI report last week following on from your reporting? Of course, and this NAA report was triggered by our reporting last year. It's sent out there to prepare for a further set of hearings, which will take place hopefully in the next few months, but it's still up in the air a bit,

where the Public Accounts Committee will then go through all these findings and challenge likely members of the Crown Estate's executive and maybe even people from the Royal Household. over what they are. But in short, there were two really quite startling findings from his report. Firstly, was that Andrew was able to charge private rents for some of the cottages on the estate of Royal Lodge. Now, it's not clear exactly what those rents were. It's not clear to what extent these were arrangements with staff members. But at the end of the day, what the report revealed is this was money going to him privately, not to the household for upkeep of the estate or the Crown Estate. So he's living in Royal Lodge on a peppercorn rent and charging essentially staff in cottages for rent to stay. So that was one big revelation. And we should remember that any assets of the Crown Estate, while they're held in the name of the King,

the whole point of the Crown Estate is to use these properties to generate a profit to return to the taxpayer. So in effect, this is money that under another arrangement might go to the taxpayer that instead, under the terms of the arrangement, we're going to Prince Andrew privately. So when asked about this, which we did, the palace said that it was an arrangement whereby rent was paid to Andrew just to cover maintenance costs for cottages. And there was a suggestion that he wasn't profiting from that was just to cover an upkeep. We have not been able to verify that and nor have the National Audit Office. And that's the key thing about transparency. As well as the Andrew subletting cottages within Royal Lodge, what else struck you?

What else stood out? Well, I think that the second most important, and actually some papers led. on this was around Pritius Eugenie and Beatrice. And there are two key revelations around this, one about their relationship with the King and one about their relationship with taxpayers. Firstly, it's the fact that they pay nothing themselves for properties in St. James's Palace and in Kensington Palace. So Beatrice has, uses an apartment in St James's Palace. She used to share with usually, usually now spends part of her time at, is it Ivy Cottage? Which is where Harry used to live in Kensington Palace. Exactly. And they don't pay for the properties in the palaces.

Now, as non-working royals, I think the public might question why this is a justifiable arrangement. Now, in some ways, if it was all being paid by the King's private funds, which funds part of the rent for these non-working royals, that might be a different question of judgment for the King. But the issue with these particular rental agreements, which is the second point, is that they're not being charged at market rates. They're being charged at 60% of the market rate. Which has gone up under the King's reign. Which has gone up under the King's reign. But regardless, you've got to look at what that 40% means in practice. So the royal household gets a subsidy from the UK government, which is calculated as part of the Crown Estate's profits every year.

This is the sovereign grant. This is the sovereign grant. It's about 140 million next year. And that funds a lot of the royal activities, going on trade trips abroad, going on visits of the Commonwealth, things like that. The problem is that by not charging full rent to the not. working royals and obviously Prince Michael of Kent and his wife are also in the situation, as the report revealed, that is an effective subsidy from the taxpayers because that 40% is not being charged and will have to be covered by other income, including the sovereign grant payments.

So the second issue is that effectively non-working royals are being given a public subsidy to enjoy properties in royal palaces and they themselves are not paying anything. And I think for the public, especially in cost of living crisis, that is not safe. at well. I mean, one point I will also make about this report and something I challenged the NAO on at the briefing was the actual money figure for how much rent is being charged for the princess's apartments that's being covered by the privy purse. They actually withheld that information. We don't know the market valuations. We don't know what the market valuations are. We don't know the number. And this seems to have been withheld for privacy reasons.

Now, if you are somebody who has enjoyed all the benefits of living in public life as a member the royal family. Obviously, American Royals don't choose to be a member of the royals, but it's hard to say that people like Eugenie and Beatrice's not benefited from their role in the royals. There is a real question that if you are getting an effective taxpayer subsidy in these situations, we really should have a right to know about it. So we should know what the king is paying for both of their rents. I can't see any ethical reason not to. It seems like a real imbalance of power that, for example, you can go onto the land registry and look up my lease arrangement if you want and get a good idea of what I'm likely to be paying for my mortgage,

but what I can't do is see how these people in the royal family who are not active member of the royals, they're not going out and doing public works. There is an issue of privacy here about how far it's gone and whether it's justifiable in these kinds of reports. We don't get to find out this kind of information. Kate, as George mentioned, a lot of the coverage focused on the issues of Beatrice and Eugenie. I mean, that, as you said, seem to rile people almost more Tell us what else you found out after that stuff came out about, Richard Nugentine, in terms of what the fall out there. Yeah, well, I was told by a very good source

that the king will be reviewing that arrangement. So Princess Eugène and Beatrice actually have what's called licenses to live at the palace, not leases, which is interesting. What's the difference? So every year they are renewed. And this was an agreement that was struck between the late Queen and Andrew, when he was still, Duke of York and still a working member of the royal family.

ear always. And he had the late Queen's ear, his mother's ear, as we all know. And that was a deal that was set about so that his two daughters would always have a foothold in the royal palaces. That was the arrangement. Now, since the king has come in, since the coronation, in fact, those prices have been kind of creeping up. He's taken on the deal. So their rent is still funded by what's called the Privy purse, which is the king's private money. Always a bit of a gray area there. Yeah. So he, he, pays that rent. And as George quite rightly says, we don't know the figure

of what that rent is, but it's down to a kind of an adjusted, you know, we will call it a discount, the palace would beg to differ and call it an adjusted value based on the fact that these properties are within the security cord and you can't rent them out on the public to Joe blogs because of security issues. The girls need to have

somewhere to live when they're in London. Now, I've been told the King is going to review that. He's going to look at it. Again, I think he's listening to the fact that a lot of people, are angry about this. These are people who don't have official titles. They don't, well, they have titles as princesses, but they don't have official public roles. You're right. And that's, why should they then have essentially free accommodation? They're not paying for it. That's coming out of the king's pocket in the most luxurious elite addresses in London. So, so that is now going to be under review. Interestingly, there was another story that came out this week that said that the king had written to the princesses. and had said, why don't you consider other accommodation in London going forward? Now, the palace aren't confirming that story. They're not denying it either.

But it does seem that things are kind of changing. And there's two things going on here, isn't there? You've got the Crown Estate, which is the body that then has these private arrangements with Prince William, Prince Edward, Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor. And then you also have the public palaces. And they are, you know, run by the royal household. and they can decide. So there's two different strands

but this is all coming out now as part of the investigation, broader investigation into the royals and property. But what I think is quite interesting about this is how it dates back to the cozy deal struck between Andrew and the late Queen Elizabeth II. Now we know because it was widely reported and the King's people were always happy for it to be out there

that in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, Andrew could see the direction of travel was very, very keenly lobbying for Beatrice and New York. need to have official roles. Both of them have their own careers. He wanted them to be on the sovereign grant list. He wanted them to be on the official duties list. He pushed for that. The Queen, we don't really know what her thoughts on that were, but we know that the then Prince of Wales and our king fiercely resisted that and said, that's not happening now because that's going to be something that comes into my reign. So they're not going to have official duties. It's a

strong no. For years, we heard about the slim down royal family that he wanted. But what is interesting is that he behind the scenes took on that arrangement and almost they don't have official roles but he's still happy to pay for his niece's rent. It almost feels like a bit of a concession to his brother. I think that's an interesting thing to unpick. Well, it's interesting you should say that because I think you can talk a good talk,

can't you when you're the heir to the throne, but are you going to follow through when you're the king which brings me kind of neatly onto a story that you ran this week, Roya, about Prince William. Tell us what you found out about what his plan are for royal property deals when he becomes king. I just was thinking about this and thought, the king has obviously tried to move the dollar a little bit in terms of the rents.

They've crept upwards a little bit from, you know, 50% to 64, 66. And you have courtiers close to the king saying the king is trying to address some of the challenges he's inherited from his mother, but they still exist. And they might be reviewed. But also the movie is we're not sure anything's going to change. That's what I'm hearing. He's not prepared to boot them out. I'm not sure that he is.

And my understanding is that Prince William, comeeth the hour, which long live the king we hope won't be for a long time, is not just going to review, but it's very seriously going to consider stopping those arrangements, stopping royal members of their family be able to sublet their properties. So, of course, you just mentioned Edward and Sophie had sublet their own cottages or barns. We know not since 2020, but still, we know they did and we don't know how much they're made. My understanding is he doesn't want to see anything like Andrew at Royal Lodge, subletting those cottages. my personal feeling, and I certainly wasn't guided away from this, is that there isn't going to be a situation under King William V, where his cousins, however closely remains to them personally, are going to be living effectively rent-free themselves in royal palaces. So I think all of that is very likely to change under the next reign, if not before.

I suppose does it matter if he's, we're saying it's rent-free to the girls, but there must be plenty of people who, from wealthy families have, you know, their parents, pay for their grandparents, pay for them, their rent or their mortgage or whatever. It's the optics there, isn't it? Do you think it's the optics that matter? I think it is to him. I think it certainly is to William, who we consistently, constantly hear about looking forwards,

wants the institution to feel relevant, modern, fit for purpose, talk about the footprint of the institution being too large, wanting to kind of bring that in a bit. And I think he feels that having non-working members of the Royal Family, I think it would be different if they did official duties, but having non-working royals living rent-free in palaces, it's just it's not how the modern monarchy can be. Coming up.

The fact that as journalists were still fighting privacy, fighting secrecy, it seems like it's bad PR for the royals as well as creates bigger stories than they need to be. You did a story recently about William and Kate's new property, which revealed a few things that would suggest he's trying to be more transparent. Well, this is what I was going to say. I mean, there's two things again going on here with the rents with the Crown Estate. because there's long-term leases and short-term leases. The long-term leases say you need to put up a big chunk of cash at the start

and then you have a peppercorn rent. To be fair to Andrew and Edward, that's the rule. That's how the long leases are structured. You know, then you have short-term leases. And in the short-term leases, you just pay an annual rent. William has moved into Forest Lodge. We've all been told it's their forever home. And yet, his deal with the Crown Estate is a short-term lease of 20.

years max. He can renew it after that time, but that means that he's paying an annual rent. So it gets out of the optics of an upfront lump sum payment and then no rent. So no one can say he's not paying any rent because he's on the short term deal where you have to pay rent every quarter. But how feasible is it for William to say, I'm going to change things when I come in without giving us any plans of how he's going to change it? And also we found out, didn't we, George, And we were going through that lease, that £400,000 of Crown Estate money were spent on repairs for the property before William moved in. Crown Estate will say, that's just us getting it ready for the next tenants. Does that help or hinder William's stance here, do you think?

I mean, I think there's a question here around what the relationship should be in terms of how we accommodate our royals from the ground up. And again, the thing that keeps getting mentioned around William, though, of course, There are questions about how much he will actually do this when he becomes king. This idea of a Scandinavian model of the royalty where you have a very limited number of working royals. Everyone else gets nothing. They're a relative of the king or the queen. But you have no public benefits. And then you have a very slim down monarchy.

William's people keep hinting at this. But the question is there's this sort of weird sort of tension, as you said Kate, about, I'm going to reform it. I'm going to have this Scandinavian style royal family. I'm going to do all this stuff. there's always there's always the option just taking a salary and having a mortgage, right? You know, obviously. So I was going to say also he's got the transparency argument. It's difficult for William when he won't reveal how much tax he pays.

He won't give us the figure of the tax that he pays. Now, Royer and I will be going to briefing and find out from the Duchy of Cornwall accounts at the end of this month, whether they've changed their tune on that, whether they're going to tell us how much tax he pays. But it's interesting, isn't it, to find out? What do you think? How transparent will he be? It's a good question.

I mean, it's something the Sunday Times has plugged away on and did that story recently about his tax and put a figure on how much tax we think he pays based on Kensden Palace sort of confirming that he was in a percentage bracket. And what was the figure? It was around between $5 and $7 million, I think. Yeah.

And they didn't dissuade us from that. But again, if that's the case, Trisay so and reveal it in the accounts and the way that the former Prince of Wales Charles used to. So you're right, there is a tension there, isn't there, between do as I say I'm going to do and actually putting it into practice now and not down like. And I thought it was interesting to read in the NAA report

that almost half a million pounds worth of refurbs was made to Forest Lodge because we didn't know about that when they moved in and that way. And I would argue, get ahead of things like that and just say when they move into Forest Lodge, just say this is what's happened, this is what he's paying. And by the way, it needed 400,000 pounds worth and that would be the same if other tenants moved in or if not, explain why.

Rather than these things come out, It feels like the households have their hands forced to react to things instead of just reading the room and going, actually, maybe we should be a little bit more open about what's going on. This comes to the whole issue of raw finances that it will be perfectly possible for a future keeper of privy purse simply to set out in a diagram and in a report what the royal finances are, i.e. we have these companies, these trusts. This is our annual income from private sources and public sources. These are the assets we own. And there's nothing to stop them. And they must have this document internally for their own purposes. What is the structure of the royal finances? And the fact that as journalists, we're still, you know, fighting privacy, fighting secrecy,

shipping away little by little over time to get access to information. It seems like it's bad PR for the royals as well as creates bigger stories than there need to be. Well, that said, I mean, for the NAA report, they were given 130 documents. They were given access to interview the keeper of the privy purse and senior members of the royal household. So it's not like the palace have been sort of hiding away and kind of barricading the doors. But you're right. I mean, sometimes I think then being naturally the way they've always been very secretive about things is counterproductive. when some, you know, often they don't have anything to hide.

But I think they have been collaborating with this process, which is interesting to see. And it's also important to say there's nothing improper or illegal that's come out of any of these dealings. There's no criticism from that point of view on how the palace has behaved, either publicly, privately, with any of these property deals. But what is interesting, and I expect for, you know, a great investative journalist like yourself, George, the question sometimes are the ones that aren't answered that tell you more about the story. So what do you think we still need to know? What are the big kind of question marks

hanging over this story still for you? So I think one of the really interesting things we haven't really got into yet is around the property arrangements for courtiers and pensioners. So a big part of this report was not talking about non-working royals and was instead looking at those

who've worked for the royal family and those who've worked for the Crown Estate. There's a very large number of properties both in the palaces and in Windsor that are used for these purposes. Now, it may be quite right that as part of your pay deal that you are given use of property in terms of your pensionable settlement in these cases. But all we really got to know was there are these properties in this report.

What we haven't dug into is are they offering value for money? I mean, for example. That's a key question, isn't it? Exactly. People like Margaret Hodge, the former chair of the Public Accounts Committee last week said, it doesn't address that question and it should have addressed that question. And is that something that we think the Public Accounts Committee, inquiry is going to address. I think that the NEO played quite a clever game with their report

in that they didn't want to get dragged into a big row over the report. Instead, they made it quite factual and made it very, these are the structures, these are the arrangements, that's the reality. I did criticise him in the briefing and said, well, look, you are the NEO, you're the audit body. Oh, I bet you did, George. Oh, I wouldn't want to be grilled by George, would you? No. No. And what was the response? The NEO were very sort of like, oh, well, it's normal for us to do non-investative report. It's normal for us to do non-assessments of public value reports. But I think it is a bit of a cop-out. And I think what they've done is basically left it to PAC to, to inverticomers do their dirty work. I think MPs are going to be very much less restrained than

they will be given this information. Do we know how that report has been put together? As in, are we going to see members of the Royal Family or senior quarters brought before parliamentary inquiries in the way that we deal with other parliamentary committees? I was talking to the PAC on this early this week. And they're still putting together the structure. I have to say, I expected them to be further along on this process by now. Because we originally were told it would come out in the summer in June. Is that still? I mean, it may still be after the summer recess in Parliament at the stage. I mean, they're still putting through their list. Again, this is pure speculation. I wonder if that

is a negotiation going on right now. But just to be clear, we're going to have public interviews with the Public Accounts Committee bringing people in and questioning them. I mean, it's very unlikely going to, we're going to see the King or Senior Members of the Royal Family. But it will be interesting to see what they say. That's right. What we don't know is the personnel. So what we don't know, for example, is if Dan Labad, head of the Crown Estate will be called in, in theory, they could call Prince Andrew, of course, though, whether he turns up, I'm not sure. Former Prince Andrew, we should say. Former Prince Andrew, I should say, bad habits. We're not sure, for example, one of the people that would be very interesting to see before it would be the keeper of the privy curse. So Michael Stevens,

who does literally have all the answers to these questions. He is the person who is responsible for the royal finances. And I think it'll be very interesting if people who were in the royal finance game in the royal household start to be pulled before MPs to question. I think it also does mark a bit of a change in the relationship between royalty and politics. I think after the lack or perceived lack of action over Andrew, MPs normally don't get stuck into royal matters. There's convention that they don't do this in Parliament. And that has really broken down now, more MPs, more politicians, more ministers have been much more willing to be critical of royal arrangements, polite, but nonetheless firmly so. And I think having members of the household pulled before the committee,

it's not confirmed this is going to happen, but that would be a really interesting jumping off point for maybe the future of the relationship between parliamentary scrutiny and the royals. Well, it's all kind of gathering steam, isn't it? Some of it in a kind of trajectory or some of it just by coincidence, because at the end of June we'll have the sovereign grant briefing. and that's when we get the document, we go into Buckingham Palace, we get the report of how the Royal Family has spent that public money, that suffering grant that's handed to them for their official work. And then we go in, we rummage through it and try and read it as quickly as we possibly can.

We then ask a lot of difficult questions. Then we have the briefing and then it's opened up the floor to the Q&A, which is one of my favourite kind of briefings of the year. It's quite stressful for, I think, on both sides of the fence from the palace and the journal. I think there's always a very heavy sigh from the Palace. and the courtiers when we are ushered out after that briefing. How do you sign and lie down in dark rooms of flannel's over royal foreheads? Someone said to me the other day, well, you know, from inside the palace, be very prepared,

it's going to be very transparent, you know, you're going to be writing loads. There'll be so many revelations. I mean, we'll see. What do you think, George? I mean, I think there is a lot of pressure to reduce the sovereign guard now, as... Well, that's a separate, that's up to government, isn't it? I mean, it's see if they're overspending. That is true, but it's worth noting how it has.

gone up under the arrangement with Osborne back in the day. Obviously, this is going back into the days of the coalition. It feels like another podcast that because it was Osbourne and the then keeper the privy person managed to hatch a plan for what turned out to be a very beneficial deal. Precisely. And I think it will be interesting to see whether they are cutting costs in their use of this sovereign grant, given there is this ongoing pressure saying you've got to justify your use of this money. And I think, again, coming back to the start of the podcast, when you're giving effective subsidies to non-working royals, the questions this year are likely to be more pointed because it's evidence of arguably money that can't be justified in the same way

in the public debate. Now, if you're saying we're spending money on taking William abroad to promote the UK for the World Cup, for example, very few serious people are going to say that's going to have a big impact in terms of diplomacy. That's going to have a big impact in terms of trade, even taking a very hard-headed approach to that, it seems quite justifiable that's being spent money on. But then other projects, other things, issues in non-working royals, there are other parts of that spending, which I think are going to be now much more firmly scrutinized, and they're going to have to come up with good answers or stop doing this stuff. And I think, I know there's a lot of, with the royals, there's a massive issue of momentum,

that this thing's been going on for years, these arrangements are going on for the years. It's quite hard to suddenly turn around and change them. But I do. think there is growing pressure around just because something's happened for a long time, can it continue? And the problem of the royals is ultimately that comes down to the royal family itself and they have to justify their existence in 21st century in a way that historically, it was assumed that we would always be a constitutional monarchy. I think they're feeling the pressure now to have to justify this. And then the tension we've discussed around William in private saying this is something he wants to do, but will he then feel pressure when he becomes king not to row back

on some of those pledges because of the momentum of the institution. I think it's a really interesting question for his reign when it eventually comes. How does he actually deal with those issues? And I think it all comes back to can you justify it? Can you give a good reason why we're spending this? And in some cases, I think it's quite easy to, even with the Royals, but in others, I think that that debate's going to come stronger and stronger over time. It does all feel, as you've just very brilliantly summed up, as if the spotlight is shining just bright, and hotter on the royal family than ever before. And if we think about it and we track this back for the last few years,

it feels like that has been turned up because of Andrew. So much of this stems back to the fallout from Andrew. Would we be in a situation now where the PAC and the NEO and these bodies are looking into finances and the way? We all do what we have always done. We always ask the questions. But would we be having this level of scrutiny without the Andrew fallout? I don't think so.

And I think that just goes to show. And that must be a difficult thing for the king and the future king and the rest of the royal family to be digesting now, that they are coming under scrutiny in a way they almost never have before because of the actions and the public perception of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. We wouldn't be talking about Princess Beatrice and Eugenie, no, rent. We wouldn't be talking about a lot of this. We wouldn't know about the subletting of Andrew's cottages if it wasn't for the relationship with Epstein, the fallout, the disgrace, the removing of the titles. the banishment to Norfolk. It is an extraordinary ongoing fallout. It is an earthquake that keeps reverberating for the Royal Family. Well, that's all from us on this episode of the Royals. A huge thank you to George Greenwood,

Investigations reporter for the Times for joining us. And before we meet next time, Roya, I think you've got some interesting plans for the weekend that you could maybe share with us. It would normally be covering trooping the colour on Saturday, which is inked into diary every year the King's worth. But this year, I've got a, I've got a pass. Okay. I will not be covering trooping the colour because instead I will be up at York Racecourse on Saturday. I'm riding in the McMillan rider their lives race for McMillan, raising money for McMillan, cancer support. Of course, the king is patron of McMillan. The Queen is patron of York. So the day of job follows me to the final furlong, even though I won't be doing trooping.

And you've had some very royal support. I've had some royal tips. I have. Her Majesty the Queen has very kindly donated. to my just giving part, which you can donate to at my just giving page. And the king had some interesting advice for me. So I did ask him the other day if he had any tips, because of course he was an amateur jockey in the 1980s. He was, wasn't he? And he said to me, the thing is, it's about the most exhausting thing I've ever done.

And I was like, yes, it is your majesty. And he said, what you need to do when you're riding really short, to keep your legs really strong is, and this is the best thing you can do. I won't do an impression of him. Nearly did it. Was ride a bicycle without the saddle, no seat. But he did very kindly wish me luck.

So that is where I'll be on Saturday. Well, and this is a huge feat. It's a huge feat of endurance, just even the exercises to get you there. So we wish you best of luck. Thank you very much. And please you support Royer if you can. So if you've enjoyed this episode,

please do like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube so you don't miss any of it. And we'd love to hear your questions and thoughts about royal finances. You can email us at the royals at the times.com. And until then, thanks for joining us on the Royals. and we'll see you next week.