‘Meghan was naive saying royals were too formal in private – they are just like any family’

The recent appearance of the Princess Royal and the Prince and Princess of Wales on Mike Tindall's podcast 'The Good, the Bad and the Rugby' served to prove that the Royal Family are great fun behind closed doors and enjoy everything from playing beer pong to racing in barefoot to cold water swimming.

This clear sense of fun and informality jars with claims made by Meghan Markle on her and Prince Harry's Netflix series that the Royal Family are standoffish in private.

She said: "I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside. That there is a forward-facing way of being and then you close the door and 'phew I can relax now' but that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me."

After Meghan's point was recently disproven when the royals gathered to speak about the Rugby World Cup, former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond spoke to OK! about why the Duchess' views on the Royal Family prove she was "naive".

Referring to the hilarious discussions had during the podcast, Jennie said: "Mike and his rugby colleagues have a wonderful way of teasing out little titbits about life behind the Palace walls. It’s always fascinating to get a glimpse of how the family get on with one another, and also what they get up to in private.

"The image, for example, of Princess Anne chasing William, and now his children, around the 'Balmoral Square' and often winning because she is 'good at corners' illustrates that, despite her sometimes rather stiff appearance, she’s a thoroughly fun Aunt to have around."

Listeners of the podcast laughed along as Princess Anne revealed she would race William when he was a boy at Balmoral and joked that she was good at taking "corners" while running but that was all. But William joked back to his aunt as he said: "You were quite quick. The look that you had on your face was quite terrifying."

As for the fun that his regularly had behind palace walls, Jennie continued: "The younger generation have obviously moved on from the games the late Queen and her family used to play – often card games like Racing Demon. They were all fiercely competitive at that, but now it seems Beer Pong is a new favourite and inspires the same competitive spirit, obviously fuelled by a bit of alcohol! It’s refreshing to think of them fooling around, enjoying such a daft game, and simply being ‘normal’."

Adding that the image Meghan painted of a cold and distant family is very different from the one seen in the podcast, Jennie added: "It can’t be that easy to look relaxed in the grand setting of Windsor Castle, but it was obvious that Mike, his mother-in-law, William and Catherine have an easy relationship with one another.

"Their love of sport is common ground and there is clearly a lot of respect for the all that Mike, the Princess Royal and Zara have achieved. The revelation that Zara’s success in the equestrian field moved William to tears was a lovely snapshot of how close the cousins are.

"The picture we got from this podcast was of a family very far removed from the one described by Meghan when she complained about how formal and standoffish she found them. They are a family where trust is everything. And it obviously takes a certain amount of time to build up trust. If that surprised Meghan, then she was being naive."

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