Mike Tindall addresses how hard Royal Family really works and claims he’s worth £25m

After marrying into the Royal Family by tying the knot with the late Queen’s granddaughter Zara, Mike Tindall has had a glimpse at royal life – and he’s offered a sneak peek inside it in his new book

Very few people get welcomed into the royal fold – but Mike Tindall is one of the select few.

The former England rugby international married into the Firm more than 13 years ago, when he wed wife Zara, the daughter of Princess Anne and a granddaughter of the late Queen. His unique position means he nearly always gets a front-row seat at all major royal events, but unlike some of his other royal in-laws, he is not a working royal.

Instead, he and Zara are free to earn money however they wish, with Mike co-hosting a successful rugby podcast, being an ambassador for several brands and even appearing on hit ITV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, where he talked about his royal relatives.

And in his brand new book, The Good, The Bad & The Rugby – Unleashed, which he’s written with his podcast co-hosts Alex Payne and James Haskell, Mike has candidly opened up about money, dismissing claims he’s worth £25million and lifting the lid on how hard the likes of the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales and his mother-in-law Princess Anne really work.

He explains: “People think that working members of the royal family get up every day, shake a few hands, cut the odd ribbon, and not much more than that. But now I’ve seen behind the curtain, I know there’s a lot more to it than that. Being a working member of the royal family is all-consuming, you don’t have your own time or your own space. With us sitting outside the working royals it allows us to do things our way, which works better for us.

“It can be frustrating when you know the truth and other people simply aren’t interested in it, but you just have to live with it. In fact, that’s one of the royal family’s mottos: ‘Never explain, never complain.’ I try not to think about it, although it took me a long time to get to that point.”

Meanwhile, Mike also uses the book to issue a defiant message to critics who say he ‘demeans’ the Royal Family with his media career and TV appearances. When it was announced he was to appear on the ITV jungle show, some criticised him for cashing in on his connections. However, in his brand new book, he says: “There are people who think that some of the things I do demean the royal family, such as when I appeared on I’m a Celebrity in 2022.

“But I didn’t take that decision lightly; they’d been asking me for years. And I eventually cracked because they made me an offer I simply couldn’t refuse. The money I got from I’m a Celebrity helped fill the gap left by Covid, among other things. I wasn’t interested in the ‘challenge’ of being in the jungle or increasing my fame, it was purely a financial consideration.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the book, Mike opens up about what the late Queen was really like and addressed the ‘drama’ surrounding the Royal Family. In the new book, there is a whole chapter dedicated to royalty – and in it Mike attempts to set the record straight about what life being part of the Firm is like – and what he experienced spending time with the late Queen.

He writes: “I’m sometimes asked if the Queen did informality like ‘normal’ people, and the answer to that is yes. Her life wasn’t like an episode of Downton Abbey, with meals on long tables and everyone dressed in their finery every night, and Zara and I would often watch the racing with her on TV, as I’m sure lots of people reading this have done with their gran. 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

“There’s a great picture of my daughter Mia sitting with the Duke of Edinburgh that captures exactly what those afternoons were like: members of a very close family who loved each other dearly spending precious time together. Yes, there’s a lot of drama surrounding the royal family, but they aren’t much different to anyone else underneath it all.”