Princess Anne's | top tip for meeting people

She’s famously known as the hardest working royal, often undertaking significantly more official engagements than the rest of her family. At 76 Princess Anne meets hundreds, if not thousands, of people from all different walks of life every week and she seemingly never seems to run out of conversation starters.

So, how does she do it? The King’s sister revealed her clever tip for interacting with crowds - and it’s pretty hilarious. Anne confessed that she prepares three questions prior to her day’s duties and sticks with them rather than coming up with discussion points on the spot and tailoring her conversations to each individual person. ‘You can ask everybody, literally everybody, the same questions,’ she shared, explaining, ‘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.’ Anne amusingly added, ‘It's rather like market research.’

Hands-off approach

Providing further insight into her walkabout protocol, she said that she ‘sticks with’ not shaking people’s hands as you can’t do it ‘with everybody’. However, she added that she’s ‘noticed others don't’ do the same. ‘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. And it seems to me that it's become a shaking hands exercise rather than a walkabout if you see what I mean,’ the notably
no-nonsense royal explained.