Former Royal Employee Reveals Nickname for Palace Where Staffers Always Got Drunk
Buckingham Palace is the administrative headquarters of Britain’s monarch. The famed London Palace is a massive structure with more than 750 rooms, and it still serves as a space where some members of the royal family can choose to work out of.
But many royals aren’t fans of Buckingham Palace for a few reasons. Staffers, on the other hand, who worked there over the years, made sure they had a good time.
There was a bar inside Buckingham Palace where staffers drank often
While it’s common knowledge that the royals enjoy adult beverages from time to time, many people aren’t aware that Buckingham Palace had its own private bar for the hundreds of employees who worked within the household. In the documentary Secrets of the Royal Palaces, Queen Elizabeth II’s former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, confirmed that.
While the late queen was said to be a fan of wine, dry martinis, and champagne, her favorite drink above all was gin and Dubonnet. Well, turns out a lot of her staffers liked gin as well.
However, according to Arbiter, unlike the queen, many staffers didn’t know when to stop and couldn’t handle their liquor. When that became too obvious and they continued to get “too worse for wear” Queen Elizabeth knew she “had to get rid” of it. So she made the decision to have the bar shut down.
Ex-butler says the Palace got a nickname thanks to that bar
Paul Burrell began working in the royal household when he was 18 years old and served as Queen Elizabeth II‘s personal footman. In 1987, he was moved to the household of then-Prince Charles and Princess Diana. When they separated, Burrell served as Diana’s butler, looking after her and her sons until the princess’s death in 1997.
The Mirror noted that Burrell wrote all about the drinking culture among the staff behind the Palace walls.
In his book, The Royal Insider: My Life with the Queen, the King and Princess Diana, the ex-royal employee explained: “It wasn’t just bed-hopping that went on in the palaces; there was a degree of inebriation which often helped loosen people’s inhibitions.”
Even after Queen Elizabeth closed the bar down, staffers still found a way to drink.
“I quickly became quite familiar with the ingenious ways in which the household smuggled booze for their soirees,” Burrell shared. “I would be ordered by senior members of staff to empty a screw-topped tonic water bottle each night and fill it with gin for them to use for parties in their rooms. These parties were for a select group of staff. There was a hierarchy downstairs as well as upstairs. Certain cliques of servants, depending on your rank and length of service, were invited to the soirees.”
According to Burrell, all the debauchery that went on there earned the Palace a fitting nickname.
“Forget Buckingham Palace, it was nicknamed ‘Gin Palace’ after the spirit that flowed freely through the everyday workings of the building,” he said. “Gin, always, Gordon’s, was the drink of choice.”
