Princess Diana Loved Spoiling Prince William and Prince Harry with McDonald’s Happy Meals
So many parents treat their kids to fast food as an occasional treat. However, it’s surprising to find that even Princess Diana was known to indulge in a drive-thru meal sometimes. And what’s more, Diana was known to give her sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, a McDonald’s Happy Meal or two.
The royal family has access to the finest ingredients and the most highly trained chefs in the world. But one of those chefs, Darren McGrady, revealed that the Princess of Wales had a lot of love for a greasy burger and bag of fries that she passed on to her children.
Princess Diana loved buying McDonald’s for William and Harry
Everything in moderation, right? While Diana certainly fed her sons nutritious foods and plenty of vegetables during their childhood, she wasn’t above letting them have a tasty treat from a fast-food drive-thru. McGrady recalls one incident when the Princess of Wales got Happy Meals for her boys.
“I remember the Princess came into the kitchen one day and said, ‘Cancel lunch for the boys; I’m taking them out, we’re going to McDonald’s,'” he said during an interview with Marie Claire. “And I said, ‘Oh my God your royal highness, I can do that, I can do burgers.’ And she said, ‘No, it’s the toy they want.'”
Fast food became a special treat and bonding moment for the royals
That visit to McDonald’s wasn’t a one-time thing. Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell remembers how the Princess of Wales used to make dinnertime special with her sons and often included fast food as part of their evening ritual.
He told The Mirror, “The three of them would nip to McDonald’s for a Big Mac and fries before coming back to watch Blind Date. All three of them would squat on this massive, stuffed hippopotamus Diana had in her sitting room.”
And even when they weren’t getting food from the drive-thru, Diana often let William and Harry indulge in other Americanized “kid food,” like pizza and potato skins. In other words: she treated them like regular kids.
Princess Diana was personally a big fan of fast food, too
It wasn’t only Happy Meals that Diana was purchasing at McDonald’s. She also indulged in fast food on occasion, like when she had two of her employees, Mark Simpson and Burrell, run out for a late-night fast food treat just before her wedding to Prince Charles.
Journalist Steve Dennis revealed, via Express, “Mark Simpson and Paul Burrell trot out of Buckingham Palace and go down one of the side roads to McDonald’s and bring back three Big Macs, some fries and some Coke.”
He continued: “It’s sneaky and it’s almost like this Pink Panther-esque escapade, tiptoeing down the carpet, knowing they’ll be in huge trouble if found…They drop off this Big Mac and they have this little Big Mac Party.”
Ultimately, her love for fast food showed how relatable Diana truly was. “And it was the first time Paul saw how breathtakingly normal, down-to-earth and genuine the princess was ‒ and how lost she was.”
