Mike Tindall has revealed what really happened the first night he met Zara in Australia back in 2003, as he admitted that their mutual love of a good time had bonded them fairly instantly.
The former England rugby player told the story to his campmates during his time on the ITV reality show, which also took place Down Under, as he recalled he had been drowning his sorrows on the night in question.
He said to Babatunde Aléshé and Owen Warner: “I was at the World Cup, she [Zara] was out watching. I got dropped from the semi-final.
“I was p****d off and so I went for a beer with another guy who got dropped and a guy who was over [in Sydney]. They’d met her before and they introduced us and then got chatting.”
Owen then pointed out: “So if you never got dropped you never would have met her?”, to which Mike responded jokingly: “Best decision of Clive Woodward’s life”, as Owen added: “Thank god he dropped you.”
The couple hit it off and went for “lunch locally” for their first real date, with Mike revealing: “Ended up being quite a boozy one. Then we figured out that we both quite like getting smashed. It was a good start.”
At the time Zara was known as Zara Phillips, the daughter of Princess Anne and her first husband Captain Mark Phillips, and she had been travelling in Australia on her gap year.
Her relationship with Mike went from strength to strength, with the pair getting engaged in December 2010 and tying the knot on July 30 2011 at Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh.
The rugby player told hosts Seann Walsh and Jack Dee: “The only times I’ve ever cried, well really ever cried, [was] when I had a bull Mastiff called Misty who died and then Cawley, who was Storm’s mum when she died as well.”
He said of his elderly dog Storm: “It’s difficult with her [Storm] at the moment because she is, you know, unfortunately, she’s very old now and it’s getting to that sort of time where you’re asking the question, ‘is she enjoying what she’s doing’, you know?
“She’s just got no interest. You shake a lead at her, you go out, you go outside. You have to sort of drag her outside. She’s like, ‘I don’t want to go’. And I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, you need to sort of go too’.
“She’s like, an old human being. She hates noise. So whenever she’s, like, happy as Larry, and then you get down for the breakfast time and she’s like, ‘Please open any door – I’m going to a different room because the noise is doing my head in’.”
