A childhood friend of Prince William and Harry has claimed that life in the royal family is ‘totally miserable’ – and revealed what they were really like during their schooldays.
Humphrey Ker and William were classmates at Ludgrove School from 1990 before moving to Eton in 1995 – with Harry a few years below.
The actor and writer, who is also the executive director of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney‘s Wrexham AFC and now lives in LA, even shared a dorm with the future King aged seven.
In a new interview with the Telegraph, the 43-year-old shared that, when the boys were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, William announced his intentions to become a ‘policeman’ – to which everyone erupted into laughter.
However, even at the age of seven, Humphrey said he ‘really felt for’ the young princes amid the startling attention they received from the public, noting that there was also more difficult side to being in the royal family.
Humphrey said: ‘It was during that period when Diana was front page news every single day. Everybody knew everything going on, and it just seemed totally miserable.
‘[William] was always very sweet and sensible. He just knew what his responsibilities were. Harry was much more of a maniac: great fun but much more badly behaved. I’m sure it’s exactly the same dynamic [with George and Louis] now.’
‘I just feel so sorry for them. It’s that gilded cage thing. It just looks miserable,’ the director added, reflecting on the pressures of life in the royal family.
An old schoolmate of Prince William and Prince Harry has revealed what they were really like during their time at Eton College. Pictured with their mother Princess Diana on his first day of Eton in 1995
He added that King Charles and Queen Camilla, in his view, would be truly happy living quiet lives in Gloucestershire with the dogs and ‘running some eco business’.
William and Kate’s children, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, seven, all attend the £21,000-a-year Lambrook School in Berkshire, near their ‘forever home’ in Windsor.
Humphrey lost touch with William throughout Eton, and they went their separate ways at university, attending Edinburgh and St Andrews respectively.
However, they briefly reunited last year, when William made a trip to Wrexham for St David’s Day.
After greeting him warmly, William asked: ‘Have you still got pugs?’
Mr Ker replied he had just one, a pug dog named Hilda. ‘She’s the queen,’ Mr Ker joked as he showed a laughing William a picture of the dog on his phone.
In 2023, Humphrey also met King Charles, who even appeared in the first episode of Welcome To Wrexham.
The King delighted fans by making a subtle joke about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Prince Harry arrives with his parents to start at Ludgrove School in 1992
Shaking hands with Charles, sitcom actor Rob said he now calls Los Angeles home, but is originally from Philadelphia, to which the monarch replied: ‘I hear it’s always sunny there,’ in a reference to the popular comedy, which Rob co-created.
Humphrey told Metro at the time: ‘[The King] knew full well. He was very pleased with his joke and he said that he’s got people to tell him, keep him abreast of what’s going on and set him up for these sorts of things. They had a great time.’
Ingrid Seward, who has spent 40 years following The Firm, previously wrote that growing up, the late Queen had always thought Charles and Diana’s children were ‘unruly little boys’.
At the age of nine, Harry turned to his brother and declared: ‘You’re going to be King; it doesn’t matter what I do.’
At Eton, according to royal insider Katie Nicholl, Harry was more ‘interested in having fun than knuckling down’ so it was no great surprise when the Prince failed two of his AS Levels at the start of his final year which meant Eton ‘insisted’ he joined the year below.
While the Prince left school with his cohort of pupils, Harry still faced the humiliation of having to drop History of Art.
‘But even that didn’t prove sufficient motivation for Harry to start working,’ Nicholls wrote.
Harry left Eton in August 2003 with a B in art and a D in Geography and while the then Prince Charles said he was ‘very proud’ of the results and that his son had ‘worked hard for these examinations’, rather than revising, Harry spent a lot of his time making mischief.
William speaks with Wrexham AFC executive director Humphrey Ker at The Turf pub in March 2024
Nicholls wrote, in her Royal biography The Making of a Royal Romance, that weeks before his exams Harry was a ‘regular guest at Highgrove’ and he ‘sneaked off to the Royal Berkshire Polo Club’.
‘It seemed that no matter how many times he had his wrists slapped, Harry would not learn,’ said Nicholls.
Harry was particularly candid about his time at Eton in his autobiography Spare, describing his arrival at the £21,000 per term school as a ‘shock’.
Despite his academically poor performance, Harry received a place at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst where the Prince completed his training to become an army officer.
Prince William, on the other hand, did well at school and at university.
He went on to captain the swimming team and his house football squad and also took up water polo, as well as being a dab hand in the kitchen – as photos of him making paella during a cooking class proved.
During his senior year at Eton, Prince William was one of 21 elected members of a prestigious prefect society, with members known as ‘Pop’.
William finished his time at Eton with three A Levels, an A in Geography, a B in History of Art and a C in Biology.
He then enjoyed a gap year, during which he took part in British Army training exercises in Belize and visited Africa, before enrolling at St Andrews University.
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