TV Presenter Reveals a Sweet Kate Middleton Moment That Left Her Shoeless
The TV host recounts the down-to-earth gesture that left his family stunned when the Princess of Wales came over to film a project.
A member of the royal family, that too a senior one, at that, padding around barefoot, when does that ever happen? Practically never! At least in living memory. Yet a British star has now shared that a senior royal once arrived at his parents’ home in her socks. And it is none other than the future Queen consort, Kate Middleton. Roman Kemp admits he’s still not entirely over the moment. Kemp, now 32, has spent the last few years using his platform to speak openly about mental health, a subject that directly connected him to the Princess of Wales. The princess had directly reached out to him about a project he was developing. “A member of the palace team asked me if they could set up a Zoom call to discuss the details,” he told The Sun. “I was expecting a load of people on the call and couldn’t believe it when it turned out to be just me and her.”
Their connection continued in 2023, when Kemp assisted with a short film for the Princess’s 'Shaping Us' early childhood campaign. She suggested filming at his place, but Kemp instead steered her to his parents’ house, as it was far more suited. A very surprised Kemp confessed, “I remember when she arrived, she could see everyone else had taken their shoes off, so she offered to take hers off,” adding, “It was surreal. Somehow you never expect to see a member of the Royal Family in their socks!”
The future queen, navigating the social customs of a middle-class hallway, is a picture that would surprise most people, and also something that the late Queen loved. Kemp’s mother, Shirlie Holliman, reacted the way any host would when told the Princess of Wales was en route; she ran out to the kitchen to stock up. Within hours, tea and biscuits were being passed around the table as Middleton chatted with Kemp’s parents. The family even sent her home with their own homemade apple juice, pressed from fruit grown in their garden. To the family's surprise, "A few weeks later, she wrote a lovely letter which my mum has kept, thanking them and saying that Prince George loved the juice and is there any chance of more,” Kemp said.
Middleton later also sent Kemp a handwritten note. “She very kindly wrote me a thank-you note too,” he says, “which I have framed on my wall at home.” However, Kemp's story also ends up brushing against something Meghan Markle once said about royal formalities. In Harry & Meghan, the 2022 Netflix docuseries, she spoke about how startled she was by the stiffness she felt from the family, even in private settings. In episode two, she revisited her first meeting with Prince William and Middleton and admitted that the contrast between her own casualness and their composure left her unsettled.
“They came over for the first time, I remember I was in ripped jeans, and I was barefoot,” she said, adding that she quickly realised that “the formality on the outside carried through on the inside.” She had expected the doors to close and the atmosphere to loosen, but, as she put it, “that formality carries over on both sides, and that was surprising to me.”
