Royal Family Star In The Good, The Bad & The Rugby Special

Photo Credit: Chris Jackson

The Good, The Bad & The Rugby laid down an early World Cup marker on 9 September with the release of a remarkable podcast, filmed at Windsor Castle.

Featuring Prince William and Princess Catherine of Wales, and Princess Anne, the podcast sees Mike Tindall (husband of Zara Phillips and son-in-law to Princess Anne) and co-hosts James Haskell and Alex Payne sit down with the royal trio for a candid chat.

In the first three days since launch on 9 September, the podcast – which was produced by The Good, The Bad & The Rugby, Folding Pocket and our sister company Platform Media – has been viewed more than 1.8 millions times on GB&R’s YouTube channel.

As patrons of the Welsh Rugby Union (William), Rugby Football Union (Catherine) and Scottish Rugby Union (Anne), respectively, the royal trio unsurprisingly have some fond rugby-related memories, but the 50-minute special unearthed some new revelations about the Royals’ experiences of playing and watching sport.

While she jokingly tried to deny it, the Princess of Wales was outed as “uber competitive” by Tindall, who added “I’ve seen her play beer pong!”. The Princess herself suggested that she and William probably would disagree as to which of the two of them were better at any given sport, and also described her particular love of cold water swimming.

Prince William reflected on the privilege and excitement of being able to watch so many sporting events, before revealing that the only time he’s ever cried when watching sport was when he saw Zara Phillips win the 2005 European Eventing Championship: “I was down in Exmoor at the time camping. We were all huddling around the phone watching it. She was there, she was blubbing away, the flag was going up. I was in pieces.”

Speaking about her patronage of the SRU, Princess Anne explained that it was, in fact, a happy accident: “They asked me to go and open the East Stand [at Murrayfield] when it was built, at about two weeks’ notice because they’d been let down. As it happened [my] horse was lame, so I wasn’t competing at the weekend [so I accepted]… About a month later they wrote and asked if I’d like to become patron.”

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