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A lip reader has revealed details of a “tense” outburst Prince William had with his aunt Princess Anne as the royals gathered at the Commonwealth Day service.
William stepped out on March 9 at Westminster Abbey for the biggest royal gathering since the arrest of the former Prince Andrew.
Lip-reading expert and analyst Nicola Hickling told Daily Mail that William apparently said to Anne, “I’ve had enough of hearing his name, to be honest.”
While the expert said it was unclear what prompted William’s words – as Anne was turned away from the camera – she described the conversation as “brief and subdued” and revealed that William also appeared to say, “It’s up for debate”.
Details of the interaction between William and his aunt come as a royal photographer made a shock claim about the prince’s temper.
Political and cultural magazine, the New Statesman, sent a reporter to interview photographers who were stationed in Norfolk – where the King’s Sandringham Estate is based and where disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor now lives – waiting for a royal scoop.
As the group sheltered under a tree, the New Statesman reported that they swapped “war stories about the royals”.
“They didn’t seem to like any of them,” the outlet claimed of the snappers. “William was the rudest of the lot, apparently”
Indeed, one royal photographer among them had some shickingly blunt words to say about the Prince of Wales.
“Horrible. Arrogant. C**t,” was the description the disgruntles snapper used, adding that the prince “always tells me to f**k off.”
It would be true to say that William does indeed have some form when it comes to speaking his mind to errant snappers.
In 2023, a video showing an irate William raging at a photographer who was documenting him and his family out on a bike ride went viral.
“How dare you behave like you have done with our children?” William thundered. “How dare you? Stalking around here looking for us and our children?
“I’m out for a quiet bike ride with my children … You’re outrageous, you’re disgusting, you really are”.
It should further be added that it’s also not the first time that a royal’s dislike for a faction of the media has come to light so spectacularly.
In a moment some may remember, Charles was once famously caught on camera expressing his real feelings about then BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell.
The hot mic moment came during a 2005 photo call at Klosters ski resort in the Swiss Alps where the then Prince of Wales was quizzed about his upcoming wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles.
Witchell asked Charles about his feelings leading up to the nuptials – a question Charles answered, somewhat sarcastically, before muttering under his breath to William and Harry who were next to him.
“Bloody people. I can’t bear that man. He’s so awful. He really is,” Charles told them, seemingly unaware that his comments could be picked up clearly by the cameras.
Charles is said to have been irritated by William and his then-girlfriend Kate Middleton being snapped by the paparazzi a day earlier.
In a 2023 interview with The Telegraph, Witchell reflected more on the famous moment, explaining he’d hoped to get Harry and William to “endorse” their father’s wedding with his question.
(For added context it should be remembered that Charles’ marriage to Camilla was controversial given they had an affair while he was still married to Diana, Princess of Wales.)
“People weren’t in the best of moods that morning,” Witchell explained. “It sounds the most inane and pathetic question really: ‘How do you feel about the wedding?’
“But if you sort of unpack that, as the then Prince of Wales immediately did… I could see that his face was somewhat changing colour.”
Paddy Harverson, Charles’s press secretary at the time, later said Witchell had been in the “firing line” when the prince was “expressing his general frustration at the paparazzi”.
“It wasn’t personal. He does regret saying it. He really didn’t mean to take it out on Nicholas,” he said.
Given that both Charles and William have been known to be blunt on occasion, it is perhaps not surprising that they have also been known to have “earth-shattering” rows.
In his 2020 book Battle of Brothers, author Robert Lacey claimed that after Camilla married Charles, she was taken aback by William’s “temper”.
“Harry has freely confessed to his own blazing temper from time to time – and as for his elder brother he has proved no sweet William when roused,” Lacey wrote.
“In the years after her 2005 marriage to Prince Charles, Camilla has recounted to her own family and close friends her surprise at discovering this unexpected side to Prince Charming – ‘the boy’s got a temper!’
“Charles’s wife had been horrified at the ranting and raving that on occasion William had unleashed against her husband in her presence.”
The author further claimed: “The rows have been earth-shattering by Camilla’s account, with William doing the shouting and Charles submitting meekly on the receiving end.”
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