Sunday Times 2
Lankan maid Melani quits palace job over Queen’s hot water bottle
Bedtime for the Queen on recent chilly spring evenings has not been complete without one of her most cherished pleasures – a hot water bottle, placed snugly between the silken sheets
Imagine Her Majesty’s shock, on retiring to her large first-floor bedroom overlooking the gardens at Buckingham Palace just the other evening, to find her bed ice-cold. No bottle.
Instead, it was lying to one side and was unfilled, so the Queen, who has always been a practical sort, made a hot water bottle for herself.
She clearly saw the funny side, turning the incident into a huge joke when telling her close senior aide Angela Kelly about it.
For Melani Dimple, however, the housemaid who forgot to put the bottle into the bed while performing other duties, the consequences were anything but funny.
Sri Lankan-born Melani, who had worked as a housemaid at Buckingham Palace for five years, and in the prized position on the Queen’s private floor for two, has since left Palace employment altogether.
There is much sadness and anger below stairs about the departure of Melani, a popular figure who was married recently and was hoping to move into a grace-and-favour staff flat at the Palace mews with her new husband.
But the anger is not directed against the Queen, who is not being blamed for Melani’s unexpected departure. It is focused on Mrs Kelly, the Queen’s personal assistant and senior dresser.
Everyone makes mistakes
Angela is the Liverpool crane driver’s daughter, raised in a council house, who also holds the grandiose title Curator to the Queen for ‘Jewellery, Insignia and Wardrobe’. These days, though, she is much more than that.
The close relationship she has developed with the monarch in recent years has now evolved even further, giving her extraordinary influence over who is chosen to work closely with the Queen, and – just as importantly – who is not.
‘Angela’s beady eye is on everything that is done for Her Majesty, making sure everything is perfect,’ says one below-stairs figure.
‘The next thing we knew after the hot water bottle business was that Melani was gone. We’re all very upset about it. Everyone’s entitled to make a mistake – and, besides, the Queen was amused to have to do it herself. I think she found it quite a novelty.’
Of course, such perfectionism on Mrs Kelly’s behalf and her wish for the Queen to be looked after properly is highly admirable, but the timing of the episode could not have been worse.
Melani had just been given British citizenship. She was offered a new role training other staff, but she decided to leave royal service altogether.
‘There was no doubt she was upset at what happened because everyone knew about it,’ says a friend of the softly-spoken former maid. ‘She was very house-proud.’
But that wasn’t the end of the story. When the Queen heard that Melani had put in her notice, she sent for her because she wanted to say her own farewell to the charming girl who, she understood, was returning to Sri Lanka.
‘Apparently the Queen was very surprised when Melani told her that she wasn’t going back to Sri Lanka but was staying in London,’ says a close figure.
But this isn’t the only departure from the Queen’s floor to have sent a wave of uncertainty belowstairs at a time when, ironically enough, ‘upstairs’ the Royal Family has been enjoying its calmest and most successful period for years.
© Daily Mail, London