| In Their Own Words: 'Wogan' TV Interview With Princess Anne (1985) |
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| Written by Joanne Leyland | |
| Monday, 15 May 2006 | |
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TV Programme: Wogan TV Channel: BBC1 Guests: H.R.H. The Princess Royal, Mark Tully and Frankie Goes to Hollywood WOGAN: "Do you find the various engagements you take on an enormous strain? You must do. Who offers advice on how to cope with these appearances, what to do, what to say? Have you generally learnt from experience yourself? I know you write all your own speeches." ANNE: "You learn the hard way, mostly. And experience." WOGAN: "Do you give any advice to, say, the Princess of Wales on how to deal with engagements?". ANNE: "I couldn't really call it advice. You can only repeat, I think, your own experiences and the problems that you've had and the way you've countered them or got over them." "It's important to remember what it was like when you first started. How you struggled to think of things to say, and what sort of line you were going to take, the sort of questions you were likely to ask, and how people react. But that really does only come with experience. You can only help — if it helps — by telling how you found it. And of course each individual reacts completely differently." WOGAN: "The thing that always strikes me as a formidable task is the endless receiving lines at, say, a premiere or a BAFTA award. How can you think of something new to say to each one you come up to? Apart from 'I loved the movie'." ANNE: "Well, they usually introduce you before you see the movie. Or you're opening something you haven't seen, which happens quite a lot. I'm very short about it. I say I'm very much looking forward to seeing whatever it is I'm about to open. Or words to that effect." "But I frequently thank them for having the opportunity of seeing it before opening, if I'm allowed to! It depends. You can play it two ways. You can ask everybody — rather like a sort of market research — literally everybody, the same questions. So you have three questions for that afternoon and you ask everybody the same questions. And with any luck it shortens the time involved, because if the person standing next to the one you're talking to is paying attention he'll have the answers ready for you. It doesn't always happen!".  WOGAN: "There have been tales in the Press of you and the Princess of Wales not exactly hitting it off?".ANNE: "Yes. One of their better fairy stories. Usually it's not worth saying anything in reply. The fact that it was just a story in the first place means they'll take anything you say and it will come out on their side." WOGAN: "You've missed a couple of Royal occasions — you missed the Queen's Coronation, didn't you? They wouldn't let you go to that!". ANNE: "True. They wouldn't let me go. I was sort of tied to the rocking horse all morning. I don't think I knew what was going on, but I was annoyed about being left behind, irrespective of what it was I was being left behind from!". WOGAN: "And then they wrenched you from your tutors, and sent you off to Benenden." ANNE: "I'm afraid they didn't wrench me. I volunteered. With tutors, there's really only you and them. And that requires an awful lot of concentration. There are certain advantages to being lost in a class!". WOGAN: "How did they treat you? Was there any bullying?". ANNE: "I wasn't that big a girl. No, I don't think so. I wasn't really aware of any. But I didn't set out to. I'm very quiet. I kept my eyes and ears open." WOGAN:"When you finished at Benenden, it is said you could have gone on to University. But unlike your brothers you didn't choose to do so."  ANNE: "Well, I must admit that at the time I was rather influenced by the fact that I thought there were quite a lot of my contemporaries who were going to university simply because it was university. They didn't seem to be going for any particular reason. Just experience.""At that stage, I was being included by the Queen on some of her visits and I rather hoped to go abroad with her as well. So I just felt that that was possibly more constructive from my point of view and more interesting than it would have been going to university." "A lot of people think that on a Royal visit you don't see anything, that you only meet grand people and you only see what they want to show you. And of course that rather assumes that you never look out of the window and are stone deaf as well, and incapable of asking questions! I learnt a lot, I think. We went to some very interesting places." "There's this wonderful phrase, 'ordinary people'. They may have been the top people in the country, but equally there must have been a very good reason for them having got there in the first place. It was a view, certainly, and you could legitimately be criticised for it being one kind of view, but nonetheless they were worth talking to and asking questions." WOGAN: "When you see your elder brother, and indeed your younger brother, taking part in university reviews and madcap gaiety like that, don't you miss that?". ANNE: "I did that in the Girl Guides!" WOGAN: "Now you're the Chancellor of The University of London." ANNE: "Strange, isn't it? They were given the choice, that's all I can say. But don't you think that it's a very good idea for a University Chancellor not to have been to university? Don't you think it gives them a much better outlook...than somebody more introverted?" "Certainly I think it's been of great benefit to me, because I've learnt all sorts of things on my visits to the various colleges." WOGAN: "Are you conscious of the fact that what we call in this business, your image, has improved over the past few years?". ANNE: "Are you telling me? I tend to wonder — I like to ask people what they were expecting, before they met me. Then I find out what my image was." WOGAN: "All public figures are security risks. To what extent is your private life hampered by security?".  ANNE: "Nowadays, not really. Because living in Gloucestershire and on a farm is really quite off the beaten track, and out of the public view, it's not really too difficult. You're at home and not very much in evidence.""In public on your official engagements, of course, it's an occupational hazard. But I think while you're busy and going about talking to people, you don't really notice. That's not to say other people don't notice. It tends to be rather more obvious from the outside than it is from where you are." WOGAN: "Do you and Captain {Mark} Phillips ever get a chance to go out on your own, say for a quiet meal?". ANNE: "Yes. Because being in a reasonably quiet rural area, that's not really very difficult. There are actually some decent restaurants down there. I'm not going to tell you where they are!". WOGAN: "You're under constant scrutiny as far as your appearance goes. Are you fed up with that?". ANNE: "Yes. It's a little bit more entertaining now. Obviously in the past I wasn't sufficiently interested in clothes really to be of interest to anybody. And that again didn't fit the image. So whatever I wore was going to be bad news. And inevitably it takes people a long time to find their feet in terms of what's going to suit them. Certainly for any younger person. It's just taken me longer than most, that's all." WOGAN: "Do you still care about clothes, or not?". ANNE: "They're more the functional part of the working side of my life. More than anything else. Clothes are for official functions, and you have to think of the sort of things that you do and places you go, and climates you're working in, and what you're going to be doing when you get there. So that limits it somewhat." "Also the fact that you'd like them to last marginally longer than six months. So in that sense you can't really follow fashion too much because you simply can't wear them again." WOGAN: "Are you terribly thrifty about your clothes?". ANNE: "Terribly." WOGAN: "Are you thrifty about everything?". ANNE: "Yes. I think so. Probably. Yes. I had a Scottish nanny." WOGAN: "What would you do if Royalty was abolished?". ANNE: "I'd have to work even harder on the farm!". WOGAN: "Is there anything you'd really like to do, any career you would have liked to have pursued if you hadn't been the Royal Princess? Would you have qualified as a heavy goods vehicle driver?". ANNE: "On the basis that one didn't have a farm to work on or there was no alternative, both my husband and I have heavy good vehicle licences, his is a HGV1 and mine is an HGV3. So in fact it seemed like a very logical way of earning one's living." "There is in fact quite a demand for good horsebox drivers. We know one end of a horse from another, you see. We thought we could probably crack that one between us!". WOGAN: "You yourself are going to get involved in racing at Epsom in the near future, I hear. On the flat. Do you think, knowing who you are, the other riders, and possibly even horses, are going to withdraw to the rails or get out of your way, or even throw the race?". ANNE: "I suppose I could go a very long way round the outside. My trainer might not be too pleased about that." WOGAN: "But you're going to be the automatic favourite." ANNE: "That would be very foolish." WOGAN: "Are you as fit as you would like to be for it? Are you doing weight training, or circuit training? Or Jane Fonda aerobics?". ANNE: "I couldn't manage that." WOGAN: "Did you have any bets yourself?". ANNE: "No. Gave that up a long time ago. When I was about twelve." WOGAN: "Lost all your pocket money?". ANNE: "Yes. To my nanny!". Comment on this article
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