It’s a Royal Knockout, Prince Edward TV show explainer: Well before Meghan’s foray into lifestyle TV, the Duke of Edinburgh had a disastrous turn on our screens

Well before Meghan’s foray into lifestyle TV with her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, another royal had a disastrous turn on TV right back in the ’80s.

Prince Edward, now the Duke of Edinburgh, was fresh out of the Royal Marines and keen for a career in the entertainment industry.

So he devised a plan to revive a once successful TV game show, It’s a Knockout, but with the addition of members of the royal family.

Watch the video above.

READ MORE: First look at Meghan’s new As Ever range of products

The event was called The Grand Knockout Tournament, but aired on TV, including Britain’s BBC, as It’s a Royal Knockout.

Despite being a ratings winner, it was heavily panned and today remains one of the British royal family’s biggest embarrassments, which is pretty impressive considering the current monarch was once recorded talking about being reincarnated as a tampon.

Anyway, I digress. Back to It’s a Royal Knockout.

Prince Edward came up with the idea of holding the one-off event under the guise of raising money for charity.

READ MORE: Inside the private life of the Lady Louise Windsor

It featured four teams of celebrities from various fields. Each was captained by one member of the royal family who would not actually participate in the games themselves, for obvious reasons.

Hardly surprisingly, Buckingham Palace courtiers were reportedly opposed to the plan but were overruled by Queen Elizabeth, who was reluctant to say no to her youngest son.

As well as running the event, Prince Edward captained team one, which included Superman himself, Christopher Reeve, and John Cleese.

Princess Anne surprisingly signed up to captain team two – the red team – which included singers Cliff Richard, Tom Jones and Sheena Easton, and actor Kevin Kline.

READ MORE: Meghan sits down with Drew Barrymore to discuss new lifestyle brand

Team three, captained by Prince Andrew, included actors George Lazenby, Michael Palin, John Travolta and Margot Kidder, while his then-wife Sarah, the Duchess of York, was in charge of team four, which boasted singers Meat Loaf and Chris de Burgh, cricketer Viv Richards, Pamela Stephenson and actress Jane Seymour.

Other lesser-known members of the royal family acted as judges, while Prince Charles and Princess Diana opted not to take part.

The event took place on June 15, 1987, at Alton Towers Resort theme park in England.

Both the competitors, and the royal captains, were dressed in medieval costumes in their team colours and battled their way through a series of embarrassing games before Princess Anne’s team was crowned the eventual winner.

However, the first cracks appeared straight after the event when Prince Edward arrived at the press conference and asked the assembled media what they thought.

For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.

He took their lack of positive feedback badly and stormed off.

Luckily for the prince, the televised version of the event was well-watched, if not well-received.

It reportedly drew an audience of 18 million people in the UK alone, making it the fourth most-watched program that year.

All the best on-screen royal appearances in films and TV

A worldwide audience of about 400 million people ended up watching the show and the event raised £1.5 million (approx $3.1 million) for charity.

But the positives ended there.

Royal historian Ben Pimlott once described It’s A Royal Knockout as “excruciating to watch” and said it was a “critical moment in the altering image of British Royalty.”

“[It] made the public stunningly aware that a sense of decorum was not an automatic quality in the Royal Family,” he wrote.

The Duchess of York copped much criticism over her manner, something that continued to sting her years later.

In her book Sarah the Duchess of York – My Story, she described the event as “my first high crime in the decorum department” and wrote that she was upset she was singled out.

“I might have mugged and cheered more freely than the rest, being such a fun-loving sort,” she wrote.

“[But] why should I be singled out as coarse and vulgar? What of Edward and Anne and Andrew, whose lead I was following? Why should I be blamed?”

You can watch the entire show on YouTube.

The 2023 documentary, It’s a Knockout: The Untold Story, can be streamed on Apple.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.