A food bank volunteer who met the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their visit has become an unexpected social media sensation thanks to her direct, no-nonsense manner.
The Sussexes visited Nottingham food poverty action group Himmah as part of their quasi-royal tour of the city. During the stop, Prince Harry and Meghan were also reunited with the women known as the “Grenfell ladies” in an emotional meeting.
For one volunteer, however, the visit appeared to be business as usual. She seemed impatient with the stream of questions as she showed Meghan, 45, how to prepare a bag of donated food.
In footage shared on X, the volunteer began by telling Meghan that the task was “not very difficult”. She then held up a bag for the duchess to fill while standing beside a crate packed with baked beans.
When Meghan appeared unsure and asked if she should move to “another station”, the volunteer shook her head. She then firmly instructed the duchess to take the bag and follow her.
Some royal watchers criticised what they described as Meghan’s “performative” questions, given the simplicity of the task. One person wrote on X: “It’s wild how she doesn’t understand how an operation of that kind works.”
A volunteer at a Nottingham food bank appeared frustrated as she answered the Duchess of Sussex’s questions while explaining how to fill a donation bag
The blonde volunteer began by telling Meghan that the task was “not very difficult”
During their visit to Himmah, Harry and Meghan were reunited with four women who had cooked for families grieving after the Grenfell Tower fire.
The couple kissed, hugged and held hands with the “Grenfell ladies”, who helped provide meals to families affected by the 2017 disaster, in which 72 people died.
The visit came after the Daily Mail reported that Harry and Meghan were accompanied on their Nottingham walkabout by a former Kensington Palace aide who once worked as a soap opera actor.
As the couple greeted members of the public, Beth Herlihy followed discreetly behind them, helping to carry flowers and balloons presented by supporters.
The Sussexes’ programme coordinator is co-founder of the PR firm Herlihy Loughran. She previously worked for the Royal Family before becoming one of Harry and Meghan’s most trusted aides.
On Thursday, Ms Herlihy travelled to Nottingham with the couple after helping organise their engagements in the city. She walked several paces behind them as they greeted a crowd of around 100 people.
Video footage also showed her positioning schoolchildren shortly before Harry and Meghan arrived to cheers from the crowd.
Before moving into royal circles, Ms Herlihy pursued a very different career as a soap actress, including playing a stripper in a Hollyoaks spin-off.
Using the stage name Bethan Coundley, she played Honey in two episodes of Channel 4’s Hollyoaks Later in 2011.
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In the storyline, her character slept with a man before drugging him and making him hallucinate that he had killed her with an axe.
The deception was exposed when a supposed burial site was found to contain the body of a pig rather than a human corpse.
Ms Herlihy also appeared in several racy photoshoots, including one in 2012 in which she wore a PVC catsuit.
Off screen, however, she forged a career in PR and, just a few years later, was working at Kensington Palace. She now works with Harry and Meghan after setting up an advisory firm for high-profile figures in the philanthropic sector.
Ms Herlihy founded the business with another former royal aide, Clara Loughran, who worked as Harry’s former programme manager and is married to Harry’s ex-assistant communications secretary, Nick Loughran.
She was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order – an honour given to those who have served the monarchy with dedication in a personal capacity – by the Queen, on Harry’s recommendation.
The organisation describes itself as ‘a small, high-trust advisory working with high-profile individuals, founders and organisations to build and deliver meaningful philanthropic work’.
Last week, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex carried out a series of royal-style engagements in the East Midlands, marking their first joint appearance since returning to the UK
Its ‘bespoke’ services include ‘advice, positioning and delivery’ to ‘help good people do meaningful things, exceptionally well’ – and retaining the firm doesn’t come cheap.
According to a tax return filed by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s charity, Archewell Philanthropies, Harry and Meghan paid Herlihy Loughran £116,000 ($155,000) for its strategic advisory services in 2023. In 2022, Herlihy Loughran was paid £95,600 ($127,807).
The six-figure sum perhaps takes into account Ms Herlihy and Ms Loughran’s time working for the Firm, as the Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English wrote that: ‘Both have been trained in the “royal way”.
‘Even the walkabout undertaken by the couple – just hours after their own team pointedly insisted they wouldn’t do one because they didn’t have the security to manage it, despite the exact timings of their visit being publicly released, presumably in an effort to drum up interest – was royal in all but name.’
In 2016, Ms Herlihy was hired as an events manager at the Royal Foundation, the joint charitable vehicle for the now-Prince and Princess of Wales and the Sussexes.
After the Sussexes split from the foundation in 2019, Ms Herlihy remained with Harry and Meghan, but was laid off by Kensington Palace after the Sussexes stepped down as senior royals and relocated to the US.
She set up Herlihy Loughran in 2020 and has followed the Sussexes across the pond.
In September 2023, she was spotted chatting with Prince Harry in the stands at a wheelchair basketball match between the UK and Ukraine at the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf.
Dressed in black trousers, a beige sweater and suede boots, Ms Herlihy stayed close at hand as Harry and Meghan carried out a series of visits in Nottingham – nine years after their first royal visit as an engaged couple.