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British royals, undercover: Queen Elizabeth, Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, Prince William and Kate Middleton have all gone incognito – and Princess Diana even crashed a gay bar with Freddie Mercury

STORYKate Berbano
Britain’s Prince William poses for a picture with a vendor of The Big Issue newspaper to promote it s charitable cause in June. Photo: Reuters
Britain’s Prince William poses for a picture with a vendor of The Big Issue newspaper to promote it s charitable cause in June. Photo: Reuters
Royalty

  • Queen Elizabeth secretly hit the London streets during World War II with Princess Margaret while wearing uniforms for ‘one of the most memorable nights of her life’
  • Prince Harry and Meghan Markle apparently attended a Halloween bash unnoticed, Kate Middleton might have been an ‘anonymous Mumsnetter’ and Prince William was a spy, sorta

Prince William was recently spotted working undercover in London to sell copies of The Big Issue – a street newspaper sold by homeless people and long-term unemployed people to earn a legitimate income. Naturally, the 40-year-old royal gained praise for his “silent gesture”.
Britain’s Prince William works as a vendor of The Big Issue newspaper on a street. Photo: Reuters
Britain’s Prince William works as a vendor of The Big Issue newspaper on a street. Photo: Reuters

This is, however, not the first time that a member of the British royal family successfully went incognito. Here are a few other moments when these blue bloods blended in with the crowd.

Princess Diana went to a London gay pub

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The late Princess of Wales allegedly wore an army jacket, sunglasses and a cap to disguise herself in a gay bar. Per Vanity Fair, British comedy actress Cleo Rocos wrote in her memoir how she, Princess Diana, Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett crashed into Royal Vauxhall Tavern in the late 1980s.

The Sky Arts series Urban Myths reenacted the anecdote in 2019, with British actress Sophie Rundle portraying Princess Diana and David Avery as the rock icon.

Queen Elizabeth slipped into London’s streets

A 19-year-old princess at the time, Queen Elizabeth anonymously spent the end of World War II in 1945 with her younger sister Princess Margaret by donning the uniform of the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

In a very rare interview for the BBC in 1985 for the 40th anniversary of V-E Day, the queen shared how she thought it was “‘one of the most memorable nights of my life”.

The 2015 British romantic comedy-drama film, A Royal Night Out, put a spin on this remarkably wild evening and added some fictional characters.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry wore Halloween costumes

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