Her Majesty (24 page)

When friends ask her what a footman does, she has a ready answer: ‘I start by saying it’s similar to being a butler and if they don’t know what that means I mention
Jeeves and Wooster
.’ But what sets Steele apart from the footmen of yesteryear is not just the fact that she is a woman. It is that she is a holder of Britain’s first university-endorsed Butler Diploma. What’s more, she’s now training to teach it.

The Royal Household has teamed up with the University of West London and the hospitality industry to produce a national qualification covering everything required of the modern Jeeves, from valeting to shooting lunches to cigar storage. Much of the syllabus was written by the Palace Steward (the most senior liveried figure in the Royal Household). Once, a boy would join the Household from school and work through to old age before reaching this position. The current Palace Steward is Nigel McEvoy, who joined as a trainee footman at nineteen when he realised he was never going to be a chef. He reached the top slot while still in his thirties and is just as much of a perfectionist as his predecessors. But that hasn’t stopped him from embracing new ideas like radio earpieces at big events. His team may be wearing Georgian tailcoats but if the Lord Chief Justice is still waiting for his gravy while the Foreign Secretary’s wife has already finished her
longe de venaison de Balmoral
, then someone needs to know pronto.

Edward Griffiths acknowledges that the more his staff are trained, the greater the chance that someone will poach them. ‘I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have turnover. Fresh blood is vital,’ he says. Some move on to big hotels or become butlers in private homes. ‘It’s important to
understand that young people have a very different outlook from baby boomers like me who are writing the job adverts,’ says Griffiths. ‘They are far more interested in work/life balance than two generations ago. People are not coming to stay for ever. If they get a job here, it’s very portable. Just saying that they have had three years work in the Royal Household – a lot of employers will look at that.’

Through internet recruitment, the Royal Household is increasingly seen as a mainstream employer rather than a throwback. Pay grades are now set in the mid-range of hospitality industry salaries. The Palace has an established work experience programme for hospitality students from four British universities plus one in Switzerland. One bright spark from Bournemouth University did his work experience here, graduated with a BA in hospitality, came back and, within a few years, has now risen to one of the most senior liveried positions.

Many – indeed most – arrive with other qualifications. The chances are that the cleaner dusting that bust of Prince Albert or the footman opening the car door will actually have a degree – in anything from history to psychology. No fewer than 70 per cent of housekeeping assistants are now graduates. The figure for footmen is only marginally lower at 60 per cent. Yet, considering that annual staff turnover in the Master’s department is 5.5 per cent – in an industry where 50 per cent is not unusual – job satisfaction does not appear to be a problem. It is also accepted that staff can supplement their income doing out-of-hours freelance work for catering firms who need slick reinforcements with a safe CV. It is not unusual for a member of the Royal Household to turn up at a smart London house for dinner and find a colleague serving the drinks. Everyone knows, though, that there will be trouble the moment it detracts from the day job. If anyone needs to be reminded where their loyalties lie, says Griffiths, then their days are numbered.

Sir David Walker and Edward Griffiths are very keen on benchmarking – comparing this place with similar organisations. It’s not easy to benchmark a fendersmith when you’ve got the only ones in the land but Griffiths explains that it’s simply a question of comparing like with like. He uses embassies, hotels and large institutions to evaluate his own team. And there is always some sort of exchange programme going on. For example, a group of footmen have just been sent to study meet-and-greet techniques and ‘guest history systems’ at the Ritz. They will write a report on their return. It turns out that there is more of a science to this than might be imagined.

‘If you study where people go when they go to a restaurant,’ says Griffiths, ‘most go back to a place where they’re recognised, where the
maître d’hotel
says, “Hello, so good to see you again.” These hotels have observed for a long period of time that a reception desk is a barrier. So the answer is not to wait for your customer to come in and then ask their name but to find out what time they are arriving.’

The Ritz spirit works in reverse. Staff from some of the big hotels will be invited to spend a few days watching a state banquet being pieced together. Seven years ago, the Palace joined a secretive club which wields huge clout in the food world and which recently elected Griffiths as its chairman. Nothing could be less calculated to attract interest than a body calling itself the Food Service Management Group. However, its members include the Houses of Parliament, banks, department stores, public institutions – anywhere serving food, in fact, apart from hotels and restaurants. All their deliberations are entirely confidential, but by pooling information, they can ensure that they are getting the best value from suppliers and staff alike. It sounds like catering’s answer to a papal conclave. Perish the supplier who crosses this lot.

The Palace is an organisation which takes its food extremely seriously. The most popular page on the entire royal intranet system is the daily menu for the Palace restaurant. Everything from the soup of the day to the Queen’s cottage pie will be prepared in the same kitchens under the auspices of the Royal Chef, Mark Flanagan. He had a tough act to follow when he arrived in 2002. His predecessor, Lionel Mann, was a muchloved Palace fixture who had spent forty-two years cooking for the Queen. In the old days, Flanagan would have joined straight from school and worked his way up from peeling potatoes. These days, the Queen recruits like any other mainstream business in the services sector. After many years with household names like Raymond Blanc and the Roux brothers, Flanagan was running the Wentworth Executive Club when he was invited to submit his CV to the Royal Household. He is now in charge of a kitchen team of 53, cooking up to 1,000 meals a day for the entire staff as well as for the Queen and her family. It is an operation that, on any given day, will involve preparing meals in up to four of the five royal residences (Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Holyroodhouse, Sandringham or Balmoral). Along with the job comes automatic membership of a club straight out of P. G. Wodehouse. The Chefs des Chefs is restricted exclusively to the personal chefs of the world’s heads of state. It is an assembly of some of the world’s greatest cooks and yet does not contain a single celebrity chef. Nor does it include, say, the head chef from Number Ten Downing Street or the US Senate. You can only join if you cook for your head of state.

The club meets once a year – the latest gathering was in China – to swap ideas and promote members’ national cuisines. It is particularly useful, in the run-up to a state visit, to have a hotline to the person who knows how the visitor likes his eggs. It’s all very well asking the embassy but diplomats are usually too preoccupied to talk to the person at the stove. The forthcoming South African state visit will not present Mark Flanagan with any surprises. ‘I know the chap who looks after President Zuma’s residence very well,’ explains Flanagan. ‘I can contact him directly and say, “Is there anything you really need me to get hold of?” Sometimes people can be very guarded whereas I can get to the right people. They know what I need to know and when I need to know it.’ Discretion, needless to say, is the club’s primary rule. Flanagan is often asked what sort of food the Queen likes best. He won’t say. Aside from adhering to a strict code of confidence, he points out that if everyone knew the Queen’s ‘favourite’ dish, she would never be served anything else.

Flanagan epitomises the new Palace ethos in terms of people management. He is a member of the
Académie Culinaire
, a network of chefs who provide apprenticeships for newcomers. He always has two raw recruits in training at the Palace and, by the end of their three-year apprenticeship, they should be good enough to run a royal houseparty on their own. When the heat is on for a big event like a state visit, he will also offer ‘chance of a lifetime’ work experience to star pupils from selected catering colleges. Like Griffiths, he is glad that the Palace has moved on from the old ‘job for life’ culture. ‘We actively encourage our young guys to go back out into industry rather than plot a more laidback path here. It’s a meritocracy here. We want to know what you can bring to the organisation.’ But he is also adamant that all his staff absorb the old Palace traditions. This may be something as minor as cucumber sandwiches (not only are the crusts removed but they must be cut into squares, not fingers). It also extends to history lessons. ‘There’ve been some fantastic chefs here. Carême – he was a legend. That’s something I keep reminding the young ones. They say to me: “Who is this bloke?” And I give them a book and say: “Have a read of this.” He’s not like our celebrity chefs. He is still very much revered.’
^*

The kitchen staff are surrounded by history, particularly when working in the soaring medieval kitchens at Windsor. Royal cooking is another
example of ancient and modern. The average Palace meal will probably have involved at least one antique saucepan plus the latest gadget from Japan. In the Georgian cooking halls beneath Buckingham Palace, one side of the main kitchen still has the original roasting spit and a huge wood-burner called Queen Mary’s Oven, neither of which sees much action these days. But there is also a knee-high hotplate from the same period which is still in regular use because its low height allows two cooks to heave cauldrons of soup and stock pots on and off easily. Shelf after shelf is piled high with polished copper pans engraved with the cyphers of different monarchs. Many are from the reign of Queen Victoria; some go back to George IV. There is an enormous Edwardian trough specially designed for cooking turbot. Next door, in the ‘Copper Store’, is a pan the size of a baby’s bath. Flanagan explains that he has invested in a lot of new stainless steel equipment but none of it can do the really big tasks and nothing beats copper for an even spread of heat.

An adjacent storeroom could be a cookery museum, full of magnificent old ice-cream
bombes
, tiny savarin moulds for finger-sized rum babas, jelly moulds for preparing the sort of blancmange mountains only seen in period dramas. It’s all still in use. And alongside these gems is the most up-to-date catering machinery in the business. Flanagan’s latest acquisition is a new
sous vide
water bath which gently melts the meat for his casseroles. Other innovations include the camera and the computer. Astonishingly, until recently no one bothered to write down recipes from particular banquets. In many cases, the only recipes consisted of a few notes and what was stored in the head of Flanagan’s long-serving deputy and head chef, Mark Fromont. ‘In the past, we would just rely on Mark’s memory which is phenomenal. But now, we take a photograph of everything and do a standard operational manual which helps with training and consistency. In the past, you never took a photograph and if you didn’t have handwritten notes, then it didn’t happen.’

The kitchen structure is not unlike that of a large restaurant. Below the Royal Chef – who does more managing than cooking – is the head chef, the sous chefs (in charge of sections), the chefs de parties (who focus on specific areas – the sauce, perhaps, or the canapés), then demichefs de parties (juniors) and, finally, the apprentices. And there are no separate sections for royal food and staff food. On an ordinary day, the Duke of Edinburgh and the porter might end up with the same gravy on their roast chicken. ‘We find it works much better if we engage everybody and there’s no division between preparing staff meals and royal meals,’ Flanagan explains. Of course, members of the Royal Family will order their own dishes. The kitchens are one part of the Palace where
there is an ‘open line’ with the ‘principals’. There is no need for a Private Secretary to get between the Queen and her boiled egg. If she has a special request, she may call down herself. But royal food is a tiny part of the operation. The chefs are much more likely to be doing lasagne for two hundred staff than cooking a salmon fresh from the Dee for the Princess Royal. ‘At least 75 per cent of our role is about looking after the staff,’ says Flanagan.

Monarchs have had chefs since time immemorial, but no monarch ever had something called a Head of Personnel until the Queen began the great shake-up of the Royal Household in the nineties. Before then, the task of running the staff had been left to a gentleman called the Establishment Officer, assisted by a couple of lady clerks and a few filing cabinets. These days, it is a twenty-five-strong operation run by Elizabeth Hunka, who arrived in 1999 after a career at the top of the commercial sector. She certainly does not feel as if she is helping an ancient organisation keep up with the rest of the world. She believes that the Royal Household is one of the most progressive workplaces of its size.

‘To be a talented organisation you’ve got to pull in people from all quarters,’ she says. ‘We’ve widened it out now.’ She lists some of the changes, not least the fact that 80 per cent of the five thousand job applications in the previous year came via the internet. For some people, she says, applying online is much less daunting than writing to the Palace. She is pleased but not satisfied with her diversity figures – 50/50 male/ female across the Household and 30 per cent female in the most senior positions (‘broadly equivalent to Whitehall’). The Palace is ‘in the forefront’ of equal pay scales between men and women. The overall number of staff from ethnic minorities is just under 6 per cent overall but nearly 11 per cent in financial areas. There are no corresponding figures for gay or lesbian staff – ‘we don’t ask’ – but the Palace has never been seen as under-represented in that regard.