I had to line up Prince Andrew’s 72 teddy bears in size order… it was no picnic

PRINCE Andrew’s teddy collection was so big it took a whole day for staff to be trained how to arrange them on his bed, a former Buckingham Palace maid has revealed. 

The 72 soft toys had to be painstakingly placed in size order every morning, according to Charlotte Briggs.

They then had to be carefully rearranged when he was ready for bed — with the whole process taking an hour every day.

Charlotte, 47, revealed: “As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them.

“I even had a day’s training. Everything had to be just right. It was so peculiar.”

She added: “It was so odd. After all, he was a grown man who had served in the Falklands.

“But he absolutely loved the ­teddies and was very clear about how he wanted them arranged.”

Charlotte, who worked for the Royal Family in the mid-1990s, has broken her silence over the bizarre ritual after The Sun this week revealed that staff were given a diagram on how to place his cuddly toys around his room.

The diagram, which is believed to be from around 2010, gave instructions on the placement of five of his favourite stuffed animals.

But Charlotte remembers that when she worked for the Duke, there were 72 teddies she had to “mess about with every day”.

She told how Andrew frequently lost his temper with his poorly paid servants — especially if it involved his cuddly toys.

In an astonishing interview, she provided a glimpse into the Prince’s life after he was divorced from Sarah Ferguson in 1996.

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She revealed the vast majority of the teddies were dressed as sailors, in uniforms and caps, and plucked from all corners of the globe.

The biggest were put at the back, with the rest in descending order of size to the smallest at the front.

At night, Charlotte, then just 21 and one of the Duke’s two maids, had to move them ahead of his bedtime. Each one had a pre-allocated spot around his luxury bedroom on the nursery floor at the Palace. The smaller teddies were carefully and neatly stacked in a large unused fireplace close to the bed.

Others were dotted at the foot of his four-poster and in other spots around the room. 

But the Prince’s two favourite teddies were each given pride of place on two mahogany thrones at his bedside. Charlotte said: “The teddies had to be in a particular order on his four-poster bed, from the biggest at the back, down to the smallest at the front.

“All 72 of them. Each had to be carefully positioned. They were old-fashioned teddy bears — the Steiff ones — and nearly all of them had sailor suits on and hats.

“It took me half an hour to arrange them — most bizarre thing to be paid for.

“Then at bedtime I had to take all the teddies off and arrange them around the room.

“They each had a set place. We had to stack the smaller ones in an unused fireplace, again in size order, to make them look pretty.

“His two favourite bears sat on two thrones either side of the bed. The others would sit at the foot of the bed on the floor.”

Andrew, 61, is now living with his former wife Sarah at Royal Lodge in Windsor. But he kept his suite of rooms at the Palace for overnight stays when he was working in London.

It is believed the contents of his bedroom were packed up and moved out during recent renovations. In recent years, his teddy collection has been scaled back.

But his demands for them to be arranged in a certain way remains as strict as ever, sources say.

A laminated sheet was even ­created to instruct maids on how to “place one small teddy & cushion in the turn down” for the DoY.

The handwritten guide reveals the Duke needs to sleep with five ­cuddly stuffed toys including two hippos and a black panther.

Andrew would scream and shout if the bears were not put back in the right order by the maids, it was claimed.

They were ordered to follow this specific way of making his bed, including arranging three cushions with Daddy, Ducks and Prince. 

It adds: “When making the bed, place the teddy & cushion next to the teddy on the lefthand side with the necklaces on.”

Underneath in capital letters, complete with misspelling, it stresses: “Do not loose the teddy & cushion!!” The accompanying sketch shows a “Teddy holding heart” must be placed on the left-hand side of the bed’s headboard.

The instructions say Andrew must have a grey hippo teddy on the right-hand side of the bed and a black panther half-way down. Another hippo teddy must be placed on a green throw at the foot of the bed.

Maids must also adhere to strict instructions at the bottom of the handwritten order that says: “The green throw should go on top of the yellow throw when making the bed.”

Andrew, who faces calls to be evicted from 31-room Royal Lodge, quit royal duty in 2019 over his links to his late US paedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein.

In 2010, he said: “I’ve always collected teddy bears. Everywhere I went in the Navy I used to buy a little teddy bear, so I’ve got a collection from all over the world of one sort or another.”

In 2019, author Elizabeth Day said the Duke had a teddy bear “proudly propped up on a chair outside his office, given to him as a wedding present by his wife”.

Charlotte, now a mum of two, left the Palace shortly before Princess Diana’s death in August 1997 and returned to her parents’ home in Halifax, West Yorks.

 Buckingham Palace and a spokesman for Prince Andrew declined to comment.