Why Meat Loaf threatened to attack Prince Andrew
Towards the backend of the 1980s, Meat Loaf’s career had completely fallen off, and his days of relevancy were over. The phone had largely stopped ringing, and the only offers that occasionally came through weren’t related to music.
After the release of his 1986 record, Blind Before I Stop, Meat was dropped by his label, and he suddenly had plenty of spare time on his hands. Surprisingly, around this time, he was asked to appear on the British game show It’s A Knockout for a special edition episode featuring members of the Royal Family titled It’s A Royal Knockout.
It was a star-studded event and featured four teams with a different Royal as team captain. Cliff Richard, Jimmy Page and Tom Jones agreed to take part, as did John Cleese. Meanwhile, Prince Andrew’s team featured Jimmy Savile, one of Britain’s most heinous sex offenders.
Meat wasn’t particularly busy at this time and agreed to take part on Sarah Ferguson’s team. The two of them got on exceptionally well, which riled up her then-husband the wrong way, and he let his feelings known to the late singer, who passed away at the start of 2022.
Remembering the incident with The Guardian in 2003, “Oh, the Queen hates me,” he joked. Meat Loaf continued, “It was great fun. I had a great time. Fergie wasn’t exactly flirting with me, but she was paying attention to me, and I think Andrew got a little – I could be wrong, I’m just reading into this – I think he got a little jealous … Anyway, he tried to push me in the water. He tried to push me in the moat.”
The Fight Club actor wasn’t prepared to stand there and do nothing while Andrew abused him. It didn’t matter to Meatloaf that his official title was the Duke Of York, which he didn’t believe gave the Prince a hereditary right to treat people like dirt.
He added: “So I turned around and I grabbed him, and he goes, ‘You can’t touch me. I’m Royal.’ I said, ‘Well, you try to push me in the moat, Jack, I don’t give a shit who you are, you’re goin’ in the moat.'”
Unsurprisingly, Andrew didn’t say anything more to him after that, and Meat Loaf didn’t get the opportunity to throw his Royal enemy into the moat, which would have made for electric television. Watch footage from the ill-advised It’s A Royal Knockout below.
