Royal reveals ‘kerfuffle’ over Prince Harry joke

Mike Tindall recalls the time he made a joke at Prince Harry’s expense that didn’t go down well. Photos / Getty Images
Mike Tindall landed in hot water over a brutal joke about Prince Harry, it’s been revealed.
The British former football star, who is married to King Charles’ niece, Zara Tindall, recently released a new book with his The Good,The Bad & the Rugby podcast co-hosts James Haskell and Alex Payne.
In it, Haskell recalled a cheeky swipe Tindall had taken at the Duke of Sussex during a live event after he and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, had quit as working royals – and how the comment had sparked “a minor kerfuffle”.
“He [Mike] even got into a bit of trouble when he appeared on a live version of A Question of Sport,” the ex-rugby union star explained.
“He told a story about him and Iain Balshaw pretending to punch Prince Harry at a post-World Cup final party in 2003 and joked that the royal family wanted to fill him in for real. I say trouble, but it was a bit of a minor kerfuffle, nothing to write home about.”
Haskell said the quip might have flown under the radar had it not been for Harry and Meghan biographer Omid Scobie, who defended the Duke online, causing Sussex fans to hit out at Tindall.
“It did come back into public consciousness when that very odd bloke Omid Scobie started sticking up for Harry and Meghan, and loads of trolls went in on [Tindall], especially about him wanting to fill in a young, defenceless Harry,” he wrote.
“All context, sarcasm and humour lost, when things are taken out of the zone they were meant to be in.
“To be fair to Tins he gives zero f***s about stuff like that, but it’s very annoying for him. Royal fans can be mental. I think we all know that American royal fans are f***ing nuts, especially Scobieites.”
Elsewhere in The Good, The Bad & the Rugby: Unleashed, Tindall opened up about what the late Queen Elizabeth was really like behind closed doors.
He and Zara have three children together – Mia, 10, Lena, 6, and Lucas, 3 – and are regular fixtures at royal events, joining the family for Christmas at Sandringham and other significant occasions including last year’s coronation.
“I’m sometimes asked if the Queen did informality like ‘normal’ people and the answer to that is yes,” he wrote.
“Her life wasn’t like an episode of Downton Abbey, with meals on long tables and everyone dressed in their finery every night, and Zara and I would often watch the racing with her on TV, as I’m sure lots of people reading this have done with their gran.
“Lunches were also relaxed, especially up in Scotland where lunch would often be heading out into the open space of the Scottish Highlands for a picnic.
“There’s a great picture of my daughter Mia sitting with the Duke of Edinburgh that captures exactly what those afternoons were like: members of a very close family who loved each other dearly spending precious time together. Yes, there’s a lot of drama surrounding the royal family, but they aren’t much different to anyone else underneath it all.”
Tindall’s experience is clearly in stark contrast to that of the Duchess of Sussex, who claimed in her and Harry’s Netflix series that she’d found members of the family “formal” who hadn’t shown warmth toward her.
“I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through to the inside … that there is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door, and you go ‘Oh … okay, we can relax now’,” she said in Harry & Meghan.
“But that formality carries over on both sides and that was surprising to me.”
An excerpt from the book, which was released last week, also shared insight into Tindall’s entry into the royal family more than a decade ago, with the rugby star describing it as “simple”.
“Believe it or not, marrying into the royal family was pretty easy for me,” he wrote.
“They were always nice to me and I was always nice to them. Simple really.”