Queen's corgis had team planning their daily menu, says former royal chef
The Queen’s love for her prized corgis is well-known. And now her former chef has revealed that they had a team of canine experts to plan the posh pooches' meals.
According to Darren McGrady, who cooked at Buckingham Palace, Sandringham and Balmoral for 11 years, the chefs are under strict orders to follow the corgis' custom menus to the letter.
In an interview with GB News, McGrady said: “The Queen didn't have any advisers at all. I think the only real advisers were actually on the corgi menu!
"She would actually have people advising on what they're having, whether that was lamb, chicken, liver or beef.”
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Former Labour Health Secretary Alan Johnson confessed to once eating biscuits prepared for the posh dogs while sat next to the monarch during lunch.
Mr Johnson said he was clueless to the fact he was munching on the corgis' food at Windsor Castle in 2008, until he mentioned to then Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy how he had “particularly enjoyed the cheese and the unusual dark biscuits”.
According to Robert Hardman, writing in his new book “The Queen of Our Times", Murphy replied: “No, the dark biscuits were for the corgis!"
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It's thought the Queen's owned more than 30 corgis since being gifted her first one, “Susan”, as an 18th birthday present. Her pets would even join her on her family holidays in Balmoral, Scotland.
McGrady, speaking on behalf of UK coffee retailer Coffee Friend, said the Queen's attitude was “eating to live rather than living to eat”.
He said: “It shocked me when I worked there that we didn't have a dietician that said each member of the Royal Family had this or that. There was none!
“We would simply put suggestions into a menu book and the Queen would put lines through the ones she didn't want."
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He continued: "She'd have breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, four meals a day. She's five foot two and tiny, but she was disciplined. It was the discipline of eating a small portion."
Mr McGrady said the monarch's main request was that the cooks should included as much fresh produce picked from the the grounds of her properties as possible.
A favourite to be put in her deserts were the strawberries grown in the Balmoral estate.
