West End star Ruthie Henshall has revealed that King Charles and her ex-partner Prince Edward played a practical joke on her during a dinner at Balmoral Castle, leaving her screaming. The 59-year-old performer details the incident in her new memoir, The Showgirl and the Prince, serialised by the Mail on Sunday.
Hilarious prank at Balmoral
Recalling the evening, Henshall wrote: 'At 8.15pm, we went into dinner in the candlelit dining-room, hung with portraits of ancestors, and sat down at a long table. I was seated between Edward and [Prince] Philip, who was always easy to talk to.'
During the meal, King Charles prepared her first martini, which she described as 'a polite way of having large amounts of vodka with a bit of vermouth waved at it'. After several drinks, she excused herself to use the bathroom, only to be ambushed by the two royals.
'As the martinis were whizzing through me, I went to the loo with a candle,' she wrote. 'Edward and Charles told me they hoped I wouldn't bump into the ghosts that lived in the house (they'd spent some time frightening me with ghost stories). They then waited outside the loo and jump-scared me as I came out. I screamed the place down. They were hilarious.'
Relationship with Prince Edward
Henshall was in a five-year relationship with Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II's youngest son, after they met while working for Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1988. She described Edward as her first love and said they parted on good terms. The pressures of her career as a West End leading lady contributed to their split.
'I genuinely fell in love with him,' she revealed. 'I suppose I was not like anyone he'd dated before, a warm and flirty leotard-clad chorus girl, prone to telling risque jokes and drinking and smoking too much.' She called Edward 'kind and thoughtful' and 'a lovely bloke'.
Later life and memoir
Despite their separation, Henshall was invited to Edward's wedding to Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, in 1999. She later married Canadian-born British singer Tim Howar in 2004; they divorced six years later and have two daughters.
Henshall announced the memoir on Instagram, writing: 'If you love the golden age of musicals in the 80s and 90s and a love story then this is your jam. I am so proud of this book because it was something I wanted to write when I started my diaries aged 15.' The book is set for release on 17 July.
