ShortHand: Princess Anne’s Kidnap Chaos

Hannah Maguire (0:14)

Hello.

Suruthi Bala (0:15)

Round two.

Hannah Maguire (0:15)

Yes.

Suruthi Bala (0:17)

We just started recording and then realized that I had failed to plug the microphones into the Rodecaster.

Hannah Maguire (0:22)

Yeah. Out of touch my arse. Humble over here, plugging in our own mics.

Suruthi Bala (0:26)

I've been humbled. I've been fucking humbled.

Hannah Maguire (0:30)

Anyway, a very royal welcome to Shorthand for you this week. We are going to revisit the British royal family, even though she is my favorite in the world. I'm not going to talk about Princess Diana because I'm not allowed, but I do still think that the Queen knocked her up. And I will argue that toss with anybody, but mainly my mum.

Suruthi Bala (0:51)

She will. Don't fight her.

Hannah Maguire (0:54)

So if you have seen The Crown, which I feel like most people, even I've seen The Crown.

Suruthi Bala (1:00)

Me too.

Hannah Maguire (1:01)

Season 3 of Netflix's smash hit introduced us to a young, hot princess Anne.

She's pouty and serving looks and being very, very horsey. She's still very, very horsey. I think Zara's her daughter, isn't she? Zara, Olympic horsewoman.

Suruthi Bala (1:17)

She is, indeed.

Hannah Maguire (1:19)

But what The Crown did not show you was a very, very insane occurrence that happened to Princess Anne in 1974, when the 23-year-old Big Liz and Prince Philip's only daughter was almost kidnapped by a lone gunman on a twisted vigilante mission.

The botched abduction attempt went down over just 10 action-packed minutes, with a shower of bullets, rogue X-boxes throwing punches and a tussle resulting in a ripped dress and one seriously pissed-off princess. Despite ending up on Netflix's cutting-room floor years later, this incident blew a bullet-shaped hole into the monarchy's security regime, changing protocol forever but didn't stop them knocking off Diana. This is the short hand.

Suruthi Bala (2:12)

Now, before we tell you this story today, we should put some other things into context just a little bit. The 1970s was a pretty big decade for the British royal family. For centuries before, the royals had been semi-mythical, remote figures. You'd have to line up in the streets for just a glimpse of them passing by, or maybe tune in to the occasional speech on the wireless. But now, the royals were in people's living rooms around the world, through the power of television. The explosion in access to colour TV, with the number of sets in UK homes doubling from 100,000 to 200,000 between 1969 and 1970, so just in one year they doubled, and growing to a whopping 1.6 million by 1972, it all meant that now we could gawp at our royals in glorious technicolour in the privacy of our own homes.

Now while we weren't yet at the peak of the media storm that surrounded Princess Diana in the 1990s, this was certainly the start of the wave of royals becoming celebrities.

Hannah Maguire (3:27)

As Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip's children reached young adulthood, the spotlight was firmly on the next generation of royal brats. At 23, newlywed Princess Anne was the young starlet of the firm, which if you need reminding is what Prince Philip called his family.

In November 1973, 500 million people worldwide watched Princess Anne's televised wedding to famed equestrian Captain Mark Phillips. It was the highest ever viewership for a royal wedding until her big brother Charles hit 750 million views in 1981

Suruthi Bala (4:08)

That's mental.

Hannah Maguire (4:09)

Yes. What?

Obviously when he married Lady Diana.

Suruthi Bala (4:12)

Yes, yes, yes.

Hannah Maguire (4:14)

After trying to fuck her sister.

Suruthi Bala (4:16)

Diana's sister?

Hannah Maguire (4:18)

He went out with Diana's older sister before he went out with her.

Suruthi Bala (4:20)

Oh, I didn't know that.

Hannah Maguire (4:21)

I mean, you know, I obviously love her.

It is not the Rex to Rich's story that people think it is. She was also 14 or something when he first met her, but you know, he shagged her sister first.

Suruthi Bala (4:32)

Oh, there you go.

Hannah Maguire (4:34)

But Anne, on the other hand, never really had the showy personality of Diana. She was much more interested in horses than in ballgowns or glamour, and she still is. But that didn't really matter to the press, she was still hot property.

With her immaculate outfits and her iconic cemented unmoving hair, Princess Anne was the Kate Middleton of her time.

Suruthi Bala (4:57)

Yeah, you can't have hair like flapping about when you're on a horse.

Hannah Maguire (5:00)

No, certainly not.

Suruthi Bala (5:01)

Hairspray that down.

But amid this period of intense media change, the royals hadn't quite caught up to the new challenges that arose from being quite so visible in the public eye, starting with their security regime, or should we say, lack thereof. In 1974, Princess Anne had only one police bodyguard assigned to protect her during royal engagements. And by his own admission, there was, quote, no special training for the job. And to be honest, as far as anyone knew, there was no real need for it. Because there had been no credible attacks on British royalty for almost a century by that point, not since the reign of the great dame herself, Queen Victoria.