reporting


training scheme and, with no guarantee of a staff job, he had to make an impression. Having recently done a security exposé on Wimbledon, getting a job as a security guard and looking after some of its biggest stars, he found himself at a cricket match chatting to The Mirror’s royal reporter, Jane Kerr. “She said ‘what are you going to do next? You should apply for a job at Buckingham Palace’,” recalls Parry. “I don’t think she seriously thought I could go off and achieve it, but I went off and enquired.” Spotting an advert for a footman on the royal website, he fired off an application with two references, one false, one genuine. “I kind of went off on my own volition,” he says. “I thought it probably won’t come to anything and, lo and behold, I got a letter back with the royal seal inviting me for a formal interview.” Parry got the job and, within days, he was riding on the back


of state carriages and shown the keys to royal apartments. “It was fairly shattering,” he says. “I was back and forth ferrying food to the royals, taking tea trays, clearing rooms all day, then there’d be official functions of an evening you’d have to work. I was on my feet constantly. I had horrific blisters. I was very much myself – the only thing I kept to myself was that I was a journalist for the Daily Mirror.” After his shift, he would go to his room in the palace and write


everything down. “I was probably writing about 2,000 words a night,” he says. He had contact with senior royals, took photographs in their bedrooms and even the Queen’s breakfast table, complete with cornflakes in Tupperware containers. “The overwhelming thing was I didn’t want to mess it up,”


he says. Within a couple of weeks, news came through that George W


Bush was coming to visit the Queen at Buckingham Palace on a state visit. Parry was told to “keep a cool head” and hold on. This saw the highest security ever reserved for a foreign head of state. Scotland Yard had put in place a £5m operation with more than 5,000 police on the streets. Parry, meanwhile, was at the back of the palace, watching through a net curtain the president landing by helicopter, . “The CIA were there, a huge security cordon had been set


up, the world’s media were gathered outside and suddenly things began to ramp up very quickly. I was getting text messages from my editor, Piers Morgan, telling me ‘Get out! Get out!’, but I couldn’t because I had coffee cups to clear.” “I think that was probably the most stressful moment,” he


says. “That’s when it really dawned on me the scale of it.” After clearing the coffee cups and two months of living and


working at the palace, Parry finished his shift and walked out. “What an experience for anybody, let alone a journalist,” he


says. He believes the key to his scoop was being given the time to do it.


The Mirror dedicated 27 pages to the story over two days, before being served an injunction. The Queen’s cornflakes made headlines worldwide and prompted a special inquiry into security measures at the palace. Parry was given a staff job and went on to become the


Mirror’s US correspondent based in New York. He is now west coast correspondent for dailymail.com and is based in LA. “I definitely have to credit that story for getting me off to a good start,” he says.


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