Despite her not being that excited about growing old, her birthdays were one of the busiest days in Kensington Palace.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on September 16, 2022. It has since been updated.
Prince Harry and Prince William, the royal brothers, got together on July 1, 2021, to unveil a statue of their mother, Princess Diana, to mark her 60th birth anniversary. She was showered with a lot of love and admiration from fans all over the world. This was the case even when she was alive, but what's shocking is that the Princess of Wales was never a fan of birthdays.
This revelation was made by her former personal Chef Darren McGrady, according to Fox News. He worked with Diana for four of her birthdays, and he recalls how she never made a big fuss about it.
According to McGrady, she'd rather celebrate her birthday "quietly" with friends, or if it fell on a weekday, she would simply have dinner at home with her sons.
"It wasn't a big celebration for her," McGrady said. "She would maybe on her birthday go somewhere like the San Lorenzo [restaurant] with a friend and just have a quiet lunch. In the evening, she would usually more often than not shower or have a bath and just throw on a white towel and robe, towel dry her hair, pop into the kitchen, and say, ‘Ok, ready for dinner.’"
"It was very quiet, very sort of low key," McGrady added. "I think she was like most women that it's another birthday, and, ‘I don’t want to celebrate getting older.'"
But, despite her feelings towards turning older, her birthdays were one of the busiest days in the palace. "It was the most energetic workout I ever got in that kitchen on the second floor," McGrady laughed, adding that it wasn't exactly because he was "rattling pans in the kitchen."
"Every five minutes it was one of the charities or a friend sending flowers so I'd have to run downstairs, open the door, take the flowers, bring them back in and upstairs, and then the doorbell would go again," he said. He remembers how the palace would be "absolutely full of flowers" each year, on Diana's birthday.
"It smelled amazing and I don't think I'll ever forget that smell, that memory, of going into the apartments and the dining room and seeing and smelling those flowers," he recalled.
The chef then mentioned how there was one thing that bothered Diana the most; receiving gifts. "I honestly think when it came to gifts she preferred giving them rather than receiving them. She used to get a little embarrassed, I think, when people would give her a gift," he said.
The Eating Royally: Recipes and Remembrances from a Palace Kitchen author says this is an example of just how generous Diana was, as a person.
He also added that if the princess were alive, she would have spent her time with her grandchildren, especially her granddaughters.
"The princess always, always, always wanted a little girl. She held my daughter Kelly as a baby just after [my wife] Wendy and Kelly came out of the hospital. She just really, really wanted a little girl. I think she would have been spending as much time as possible certainly with Charlotte and hopefully Lilibet, too, just having a fun time to those young girls. The boys as well, obviously, but she loved the little girls."
References:
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/princess-diana-former-chef-birthday-embarrassed
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by John Minihan/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive
