Queen Elizabeth left in pitch dark after staff’s mistake

• Steven Kaye worked as a Royal footman for three and a half years.
• Describes the Queen’s reaction when an under-butler forgot to put candles out on the dining table.
• The Queen ordered that the lights were switched off in the Windsor Castle dining room.

Despite being among the wealthiest women on earth, the Queen was kept in the dark because a member of the Royal household staff made a mistake. Former Royal footman Steven Kaye discussed his experiences working with royalty in an exclusive interview with Slingo.

He directly wrote to Her Majesty to inquire for a position in the Royal household, and for the next three and a half years he worked for the Queen.

When things didn’t go as planned for the Royal staff, Kaye described what transpired as follows: “These sorts of things do happen quite a lot, with any job where there has to be perfection, there’s always going to be a lot of mistakes.

“But, as long as you correct those mistakes quickly, I don’t think the Queen really minds. She doesn’t like sloppiness, so given that it’s an accident and not deliberate, she’s usually OK.

“There was one occasion where the under-butler had forgotten to put candles out on the dining table.

“As it so happened, for some bizarre reason in the dining room at Windsor the lights were flickering on and off, so the Queen ordered that the lights be turned off and we’d just have candlelight – well, there were no candles.

“We were then running down to one of the pantries to find some candles and bring them up while the Queen was virtually sitting in the dark.”

After seeing a documentary that motivated him to inquire about job openings in Buckingham Palace, the Royalist began working as a footman.

He stated:  “There was a documentary on TV and it was the first documentary that had ever aired about life inside the palace, it was like a backstage tour.

“I was absolutely fascinated because we’d never seen anything like that before, the state rooms hadn’t even been opened by then. I thought, I’m just going to send a letter to the palace and apply, see if I get a reply – I didn’t think I would – so I wrote to the Queen and said how much I enjoyed the documentary and how might a person gain entry into Royal service.

“I was in two minds about whether to post it, but a few weeks later a letter came through the door with the Queen’s crest and stamp on.

“I thought it would be a thank you, but no thank you. I opened up the letter and it said we’re interested in meeting you. I rang this number and arranged to go down to Buckingham Palace and have what they described as an ‘informal meeting’.

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