Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has launched a blistering attack on Buckingham Palace, likening the royal residence to the chaotic hotel from the classic BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers.
The 61-year-old television personality and former Changing Rooms presenter visited the iconic building recently and came away distinctly unimpressed.
“I was at Buckingham Palace recently and it looks like Fawlty Towers. Once a grand, lovely space, it now has a feeling of a shuffy old golf hotel, which smells of cabbage and sticky carpets,” he told Heat magazine.
The flamboyant designer, known for his bold aesthetic choices, suggested the Palace could use one of his trademark transformations.
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen has launched a blistering attack on Buckingham Palace, likening the royal residence to the chaotic hotel from the classic BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers
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Mr Llewelyn-Bowen currently hosts the True Royalty podcast, giving him particular insight into matters concerning the monarchy.
The interior designer also turned his attention to the Duchess of Sussex, offering a pointed assessment of her brief tenure as a working royal.
He suggested Meghan had arrived with fantasy-like expectations that bore little resemblance to the reality of British royal duties.
“I think she felt that she was in The Princess Diaries and mistook joining the British royal family for Genovia,” Mr Llewelyn-Bowen remarked.
The flamboyant designer suggested Buckingham Palace could use one of his trademark transformations
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This is a reference to the 2001 film, in which Anne Hathaway’s character discovers she is heir to a glamorous European principality.
Mr Llewelyn-Bowen also weighed in on the fractured relationship between Prince Harry and the rest of the royal household.
While acknowledging his proximity to the King in the Cotswolds, he noted the monarch remains tight-lipped on family matters.
“I might live quite close to the King, but he keeps very close counsel on that. I’m sure it’s a source of great sadness that he doesn’t have easy access to Harry and his grandchildren,” he observed.
The Fawlty Towers cast pictured in 2009
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The designer drew on his own experience as a grandfather to illustrate the emotional toll such estrangement might take.
“As a grandfather myself, it would break my heart not to see my silly, foolish, flighty grandchildren every day,” he added.
His remarks paint a picture of King Charles quietly bearing the pain of separation from his younger son and grandchildren Archie and Lilibet.
Mr Llewelyn-Bowen resides in a 17th-century Grade II-listed manor house in Siddington, near Cirencester, where he moved with his family in 2007.
He has described himself as living in the “slumming end” of the Cotswolds alongside the King, Princess Anne and the late Jilly Cooper, rather than the celebrity enclave favoured by David Beckham and Jeremy Clarkson.
The designer has been married to his wife Jackie for 37 years, crediting her with driving his career success.
“We are such incredible friends and have this great life with more than enough gin, because that is the secret to a happy life,” he said.
Jackie has now forbidden him from further reality television appearances following his near-death experience on Celebrity Bear Hunt, where he lost consciousness beneath a capsized raft in Costa Rica.