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Members of the royal family have captured the eyes and imagination of the world for decades. Royal onlookers crane their necks outside of Buckingham Palace, track royal social media accounts, and scour the internet for photos and nuggets of information that give a glimpse inside regal life. While on the surface, it might appear that kings, queens, princes, and princesses, are all about diamond-encrusted tiaras, proper etiquette, and world affairs, there’s a lot more behind the curtain. In a delightful treat, Mike Tindall peeled back some of the layers when he invited Prince William and Princess Kate onto his podcast, The Good, the Bad & the Rugby, last year. Now, he reveals there was even more candidness to be gleaned from the uncut interview.

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The husband to Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall released a book today titled, The Good, the Bad & the Rugby — Unleashed, a project he co-wrote with his podcast co-hosts Alex Payne and James Haskell. In it, he opens up about the September 2023 podcast episode in which he hosted Anne, William, and Kate at Windsor Castle.

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“I think the podcast humanized them a little bit, and I kind of wish they’d let us put the uncut version out, because it would have blown the public away,” Mike wrote of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

He continued: “They came across as down-to-earth, fully engaged, funny and knowledgeable. It was a far more enlightening chat than I expected, not because I thought they’d be dull (I already knew that they weren’t) but because I know how everything to do with the royal family is so carefully controlled.”

Although Mike is not a working royal family member, he is quite familiar with and knowledgeable about the private inner workings of the family. He shares, per the Daily Mail, that the experience is nothing like Downton Abbey.

He explained, they “are a very close family who loved each other dearly.” He even fondly described laidback picnic lunches and watching television with Queen Elizabeth II, not meals at long tables with everyone dressed in their best.

“Zara and I would often watch the racing with her [Queen Elizabeth] on TV, as I’m sure lots of people reading this have done with their Gran,” Mike said. “Lunches were also relaxed, especially up in Scotland, where lunch would often be heading out into the open space of the Scottish Highlands for a picnic.”

Mike recalls a photo of the late Prince Philip with his daughter Mia sharing a meal outside a log cabin as a quintessential example. “That [photo] captures exactly what those afternoons were like: members of a very close family who loved each other dearly spending precious time together.”

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The former rugby player also remembered his personal bond with Elizabeth, whom he met when he was 13 years old at his school in Yorkshire in 1992. He says he thinks he might’ve manifested his romantic future at the time.

“[I’m] not entirely sure whether I said to her then that I would marry Zara,” Mike said. “It might have come out my mouth. I’m not entirely sure.” He also added that the late monarch liked “normal people.”