Princess Anne's hilarious way of preparing for royal engagements means she always knows what to say
She meets thousands of people every year and has found an approach that makes starting conversations so much easier
When you stop and think about it, being a working royal is a very social job and this is definitely the case for the Princess Royal, who has frequently undertaken more engagements than anyone else in the past few years. She meets so many people from different walks of life as she carries out her duties and yet she never runs out of conversation starters.
This is because Princess Anne has got a simple way to prepare for interacting with crowds or people in greeting lines and it's pretty hilarious too. Back in 1985 she appeared on the late Sir Terry Wogan's chat show, Wogan, and was asked how she thinks of something new to say. Her answer? She doesn't.
The King's sister explained that she comes up with three questions ahead of time and then sticks with them, which can sometimes make walkabouts a bit shorter too.
"It's rather like market research. You can ask everybody, literally everybody, the same questions," Anne explained, as per Express. "Like you have three questions for that afternoon, and you ask everybody the same questions. And with any luck it shortens the time involved because, if the person who's standing next to the one you're talking to is paying any attention, they'll have the answers ready for you."
This type of preparation means that the Princess always has something to say and the way she talked about it suggests they're not just blanket questions every single time. She seems to adapt each day's selection to suit the event or focus of a particular visit, so they're still somewhat tailored without getting too complicated.
As Anne told Sir Terry, it's like "market research", and she'll surely never hear exactly the same answer twice, so the prepared questions probably actually give her an interesting insight into people's perspectives as she has a point of comparison. The practicality of her method and how honest she was about it are classic Princess Anne.
She's famously no-nonsense and believes the focus should be on her job, not her, so I'd imagine her questions are linked to the reason for her visits as much as possible. There are often far too many people there to have a unique, in-depth conversation with everyone and the Princess Royal doesn't even *try* to shake hands on walkabouts.
We often see the Prince and Princess of Wales doing this but Anne once said she thinks this changes the point of a walkabout.
On the 2018 ITV documentary, Queen of the World, she said, "We never shook hands. The theory was that you couldn't shake hands with everybody, so don't start. So I kind of stick with that, but I noticed others don't."
"It's not for me to say that it's wrong, but I think the initial concept was that it was patently absurd to start shaking hands," the Princess Royal continued. "And it seems to me that it's become a shaking hands exercise rather than a walkabout if you see what I mean, so that it has changed."
She's also not a fan of people taking photographs - particularly on iPads which partially cover the one holding them. Instead of talking to them she either doesn't bother or asks them to put it down if they want to ask her something.
