Prince Harry is quite friendly with several pop stars, including his rumored girlfriend (???) Ellie Goulding. But on Monday, Harry spent time with Joss Stone, a long time friend. Joss and Harry were doing a little event ahead of tonight’s big charity concert for Harry’s Sentebale charity. The concert will be at Kensington Palace and it seems like just another showcase for Harry’s big heart. Hilariously, Joss Stone was giving Harry sh-t the entire time they were at the event – People Magazine says she was teasing him about how he can’t sing.
Interestingly enough, Harry was also seen a few days ago at his local Waitrose (which is a supermarket, for our American readers). Harry was seen picking out some discount frozen dinners!! That sort of makes me love him.
Prince Harry proved he is ever mindful of the public purse as he was seen scanning the reduced ready meals on a trip to the supermarket this week. The royal, 31, dressed down in jeans and a baseball cap as he wandered to Waitrose near his home in Kensington Palace in West London.
Other shoppers were shocked to see him looking at reduce Charlie Bigham ready meals, which include beef bourguignon and salmon en croute. But he is believed to have opted for some Kellogg’s cornflakes in the end, and a bunch of unripened bananas.One shopper told The Sun: ‘It was funny seeing Prince Harry looking at the discount ready meals. He was looking at a fish pie that had been reduced to £4.15 from £7 and a Shepherd’s Pie for £5.95. He obviously likes a bargain! But sadly, it looked like he was only cooking for one.’
The Prince was wearing jeans, suede desert boots, a black jacket and jeans as he walked out on the trip with two discrete bodyguards on Tuesday. He came out with his shopping in a hessian bag made by Orla Kiely, a high street brand which is a favourite of sister-in-law Kate’s.
Harry is known to like to cook in the cottage that he lives in within the grounds of the palace, just a few minutes away from the Waitrose on High Street Kensington. William and Kate also have an apartment at the palace where they keep a housekeeper and are known to regularly invite Harry over for dinner. Harry regularly steps out into Kensington to shop and was seen in the very same store buying eggs in April, in what appeared to be the same baseball cap. The royal was checking out at the self-service till and appeared to be trying to keep a low profile.
Are the self-service checkouts very popular in England? Because here in America, they are the least preferred option, at least where I live. I LOATHE self-checkouts and I actively avoid them, because inevitably there’s a computer screwup and some store employee has to come help me and the whole thing takes longer than if I had just gone in a regular checkout line. What I’m asking is: did Harry have a choice? Are self-checkouts the thing to do in London? As for Harry looking through the discounted frozen dinners… such a bachelor. I’m not much of a cook, but I would cook for the ginger snap. I hope he likes pasta.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Getty.
Because that’s how you do Royally Normal. Take note, Bill.
And quite often seen recycling (Dm word) the blue suit 🙂
Awareness and not as extravagant on the taxpayer dime. Good qualities.
Our local CVS has almost totally converted to self checkouts. It only works about 50% of the time. If I am buying really small, light items, the machine can’t feel them go into the bag and starts yelling at me until and employee comes over. Or, if I am buying really bulky things like diapers, I need several bags and need to take one off the scale and it won’t allow that either. Not like I have STRONG FEELINGS about this or anything.
Yeah it’s only good if you have a few items. Also I find that your paper money has to be really really flat as it won’t suck them in if they’re not. There is always constantly something wrong with them and there are always attendants there to help you when something goes wrong. Which defeats the purpose of self help tills. YAY CAPITALISM.
Self check out lines are the devil’s work, but they really teach you about yourself. Do you wait patiently for assistance or scream bloody murder and rant about how we’re all being replaced by robots?? (Not saying which category I’m in).
I too loathe self-checkout. Not just for the reasons given by everyone else, but because every one of those machines means a human cashier without a job.
eh, I sort of thought like that, too…about a human not having a job…but, at my market, they NEVER EVER have every check out line open (even when it’s needed) which means they’re not filling all of the cashier jobs they could.
funny, I MUCH prefer the self-checkouts. what drives me crazy is when some knucklehead who doesn’t know how to use it decides to learn, with a FULL cart of groceries, in the middle of the day when it’s the most busy. “how do I…? what if it’s a…?” GAAAAHHHHH!…just go to a “manned” station and get the F OUT OF MY WAY!!!! not like *I* have STRONG FEELINGS about it either. lol
“The Prince was wearing jeans, suede desert boots, a black jacket and jeans”…so, he had on TWO PAIRS of jeans, DailyFail?
“with two discrete bodyguards”…DISCRETE? so, they were separate and distinct bodyguards?…I certainly hope so, though perhaps some royals have conjoined twins as bodyguards? I think you mean DISCREET, DailyFail.
You made me LOL so hard! Love it.
I live in Walmart country, and my store is a “test store.” About half the lanes are self check out, but we have what they call “full buggy checkouts.” Those are amazing and so fast because there is a bagger and while your groceries are being bagged and she’s helping you pay, checker has started on someone else.
Nice catch, Doofus.
The Discrete and discreet. I missed.
#HailGrammarNazis
@Rianic, I avoid our Walmart whenever possible and will happily pay an extra $5-10 per shopping trip for the privilege of not going there. Reading your description of your test store was confusing for me, because unless I’m at my local grocery store at a really dead time, they always have a separate checker and bagger for every line. I love that store!
The DM also said he ‘wandered’ over there, which is preposterous. He knows where the store is & he went there with a purpose.
lol! You poor thing. I hate them too!
if I’m scanning and bagging my groceries, I’m an employee and want to be paid with benefits. I use self check out when I have ice-cream
Joss would be much prettier as a brunette, I think.
I love self checkout. My grocery store has good ones, anyway. It’s much faster if you only have a couple of bags of items. Of course, my grocery store never has enough clerks so the express line is ten people long. I keep swearing I won’t go back there, but they are around the corner, so I lie.
You just have to love Harry! He is so cute, checking out the frozen, discount dinners!!! Even those were too difficult…cereal and bananas! A true bachelor dinner!!!!! lol
Omg, he was shopping at my local Waitrose!!! I don’t even like royalty and I’m kind of excited haha.
Anyway, as far as I have seen, self-checkout is really big in London. Most shops only have one person at the tills, and then the rest is self checkout. It’s faster, anyway!
He shops in that Waitrose all the time. Occassionally can be found perusing the foodhall of M&S.
I think he avoids all the other supermarkets because they are close to the DM offices. That waitrose guarantees a degree of privacy as he shops because it’s not very busy.
Maybe he shops at Waitrose because they stock Duchy Organics. Charles might get cheesed off if Harry was spotted in another grocery store.
Its nice to hear from two people that live in the same neighborhood! ha LAK, can’t blame Harry for avoiding anything near the DM.
They were big in Edinburgh when I lived there. The line for the self-checkouts were so long but the line for the cashiers was super short.
he did appear thrifty until you realize he was wearing not one but two pairs of jeans. Tsk tsk.
Harry definitely seems like the “cornflakes out of a huge bowl” for dinner type of guy.
There is nothing better than Cornflakes out of a huge bowl.
Hmmph. Make it the magically delicious , leprechaun-approved Lucky Charms, and I’m in.
In Geneva quite a few supermarkets have self checkouts now. But not exclusively – you can chose self checkout or the regular checkout. I like self as it’s just faster, and (at least here) the system works really well.
Also, HOKING FOR HARRY
That is all 🙂
Cue a pap stroll from Chutney and the kids in Lidl (a down market supermarket chain).
Hey, Lidl is for savvy shoppers ! The prices might be low, but the quality is pretty good – it’s been described as the middle class secret. I mean, I’m all for Waitrose but when faced with £70 for a Waitrose goose, and £15 for one from Lidl, only a fool would ignore Lidl.
Harry probaly uses the self check out for privacy and security reasons. I mean people still know what he bought because some creeper apparently stalked him in the store.
does anyone else find that creepy? stalking someone in the grocery store is just strange and to report back exactly what he was looking at down to the fact he picked out unripe bananas.. just screams stalker! where were his discreet bodyguards? I’d never want someone hovering over me while I pick out my bananas 😉
HONK for Harry!!
Poor Harry. He cannot even look at food labels without someone creeping on him. If I was in his position I would end up a hermit. There is no way I could deal with people trying to observe every second of my life.
OMG I used to live in England and when I saw the title I was like, “I bet he was shopping at Waitrose!” Not ASDA or Tesco. I used to love getting the soups at Waitrose. They were divine. And Waitrose carried my favorite coconut yogurt. Mem’ries.
Coconut yogurt is so good. Have you tried Siggi’s Icelandic Skyr coconut? The best.
Harry is for King.
I have social anxiety and self checkouts are a god send! Except for that god awful voice from the tesco ones.
And I love that Harry does his own shopping instead of sending his bodyguards to do it for him
YES!!! Where I live, self checkouts always have the longest lines, even while the staffed lines are empty.
I cannot stand to have a conversation about my purchases with a cashier. I don’t want someone pawing all over my groceries. With self checkout, I can zip right through, package as I’d like and never need to have a convo. It’s fantastic.
I get so angry when they scan my fruit or vegetables, then roll them the rest of the way down. I haven’t even paid for that, thank you.
The bodyguards still have to come along, though. I suppose they can’t just be sent alone, they have to stay close to the body they’re guarding. I’d suggest mail order or delivery service….
I don’t use self-service checkouts in the hopes of keeping people in jobs. But they are increasingly about.
Waitrose, btw, is the most upmarket of our big supermarket chains.
I worry about the jobs, too. Here in the US they seem to need a person stationed nearby for every couple of self-checkouts, to assist with the inevitable glitches. They really are a pain, imo.
The self checkouts here seem to be more common in the big box stores but my smaller, local grocery spots, Trader Joes and Whole Foods, don’t have them. The payment (swipe/chip/phone, etc) options do keep changing, which do make me feel sometimes like technology is taking over.
Harry’s trip sounded pretty normal until I got to the bodyguard part.
Self check out will be more popular here in the States by stores as they find ways of replacing people with computers to avoid paying higher minimum wage and benefits. Look for fast food outlets to become almost totally automated with the rise in people asking for higher wages.
There is one grocery store chain in my area that is a union run shop and they have the best workers. Always happy, friendly and cashiers who are nice and actually bag your groceries. I try to go to this store as much as possible because I want to support their workers and appreciate the fact they pay them well.
The one thing that pisses me off most with cashiers – at least the ones at most of the stores around me – is that they think they are doing you a favor. Only thing they say to you is ‘you got a bonus card’ and then proceed to just literally toss your stuff down to the end and wait until the very end to bag. Like it’s a waiting game to see if you bag your own shit or if god forbid, they actually have to bag your stuff too.. sorry, touchy subject for me. Who wants squished bread and bruised fruits before you even get them home?
My husband always asks the checkers about that, especially the people who are stationed at the self-checkout lines, as he doesn’t like them for that reason either. So far, every worker he’s talked to has said the self-checkout hasn’t taken anyone’s job. I think it’s because they rarely have all the checkout lanes staffed anyway, so replacing one or two with four self-checkout lanes staffed by one or two people hasn’t made a difference so far. Whether it stays like that, who knows?
He can use microwave anytime.
Maybe I’m just poor, but £5.95 for a single shepherd’s pie is really expensive! But good PR team for making him seem common and just like the rest of us 😉
Can you imagine that convo? “Your highness, numbers are down. Could you pop to the shop for some cornflakes?”
Also maybe this is Bregret strategy? Like now even the royal family is eating discount frozen dinners?
It’s a specific brand that is very overpriced. Plus Waitrose is quite a middle-class supermarket, so prices are slightly higher anyway.
Yes, it’s Waitrose. Supermarket for poshies. You can buy a ready meal for £0.99 (budget range) to £2.99 everywhere else.
Waitrose is a high end shop that prides itself on being for posh people, and providing restaurant quality food (whether it actually is or not is another matter). They actually launched a special premium line of more expensive food to cater to the people worried that Waitrose was becoming too middle class, which was literally a plotline on the Simpsons once.
He wasn’t buying regular ready meals in a normal supermarket.
Omg, crazy. But believable. Every time I go to Whole Foods and get charged $75 for maybe 5 items I wonder who are the people who can afford whole carts full of this lovely but pricey stuff every week. Looks like they have them in the UK, too. 🙂
And when I stop in Whole Foods more than twice in a week I try to pay with cash so my husband won’t go crazy when he sees the credit card bill. My secret vice.
Lol, @Esmom! I hate reading food blogs looking for recipes, and seeing “You can find this in your local Whole Foods,” since there are none in my area and I couldn’t afford to shop there if there were!
Yeah, Charlie Brigham meals aren’t cheap frozen – they’re expensive chill-cabinet. Expensive but blah. Readymeals in poncey packaging.
I’m not sure the brand will survive, given this country’s economy is currently in hospice care.
I always use the self-service checkouts when I’m en England. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with one either. It’s much faster than going through them than standing in queue too.
When Diana died people in waitrose in Marlborough threw bread rolls at Camila. She had to be escorted out by security
😂 I know that’s not very nice, but I burst out laughing reading that
Really??? Oh god, I can absolutely picture it. I’m terrible but that’s so funny.
I love that story.
They were throwing food at her long before that. When Diana outed her in 1992, she was pelted with food and the public was so threatening that Camilla didn’t leave her house for months.
priceless!
I knew she was not liked during that era, but had no idea food was tossed at her.
Honks for Harry, but also Honks for Orla Keily!! I love her prints.
I also love a giant bowl of cereal with bananas and shopping the discount aisle.
The self check out is usually more trouble than it is worth, but when there are like three open cashiers and crazy lines I’ll give them a go.
I love the self checkout at my local grocery store and they are popular there. Everyone knows how to use it and the line moves quickly. No one uses it for large hauls. However another grocery chain removed them. I forget why. I used one in a cvs drugstore once that was a total pain. No one ahead of me knew what to do and it took forever.
Self-check-outs are everywhere in Sweden. Super convenient and easy. We don’t do the “scale-thing” so there are rarely any glitches.
Kaiser, you crack me up with the, “That sort of makes me love him.” You know you have seriously loved Harry since whenever…..! But it was a cute comment.
At least one of the Waleses knows how to be frugal.
I like self-checkout. No fuss. No muss.
“William and Kate also have an apartment at the palace where they keep a housekeeper and are known to regularly invite Harry over for dinner.” 50+ room “apartment”
PR spin to make sure W&K are included in a Popular Harry story? W&K are rarely in London, and I cannot see Harry spending a lot of time hanging at Anmer with Carole and the rest of the Middletons.
And maybe he’s tired of Carole’s cheese toast, Kate’s chutney and Pippa’s smoothies?
Maybe that line was to spin it for W&K too, but I have wondered how lonely Harry is. Clarence House is in London, does he have dinner with Charles? The Queen & Philip? We know Harry is popular, like Diana was, but she complained of being lonely. Didn’t Cressy mention he got lonely too? Or ‘a friend said.’
I love the self checkout for one reason only. I like to pack my groceries in a specific manner. With the exception of cold stuffs, I bag my purchases according to where they are going in my houseToiletries together, canned goods/pantry stuff together etc. I’m sure it seems dumb to others but it soothes my ADD brain. But I also try to shop at non busy times because I get anxiety and feel bad if I hold up the next customer. Plus I don’t like fighting crowds.
I put my purchases on the belt the way I want them bagged and I get so annoyed if they reach around to do it another way. Like putting dog food separate from people food. What is the point?
You are not the only one. I get up early on the weekend so I can get my shopping done before other people wake up. Being in the store with only 4 or 5 other customers is magical!
I also need my groceries bagged a certain way and try to arrange them as I’m putting them in my cart so I’m ready to roll at checkout! I like my items bagged by type because I tend not to take all my groceries in at once so the things that don’t need to go in right away are bagged together and put in the car first so that the things that need to go in are easier to grab when I get home.
I thought I was the only one who did this – glad to know I’m not alone 🙂
Me too. I put like items together on the roly thing. The checkers actually thank me as it makes bagging much easier. That’s not why I do it, though. It’s the OCD. Have to do it a certain way. I have to go through the grocery store a certain way too. Went through a different entrance once that meant I was reversing my normal route and I had to give up and go to the other end of the store and start over. It’s sort of embarrassing, but apparently not so embarrassing that I’m not willing to post it for the world to read!
I sort with the self checks too. Frozen in one bag, fridge in another, no cold stuff in bags with boxed things in case the boxes get wet.
My local organic grocery doesn’t have self-checks. I put things in order on the conveyor belt and hope for the best. When that doesn’t work, I hand my cash to the checker and say, “I’ll bag things up while you deal with the money.”
bluhare, I always park in the same row at the grocery and use the east door not the west 🙂
I’m this way, too! For many years, I bought items for my own home and for my parents, who were unable to shop. It made things much easier versus sorting them later. I never wanted to hold up the line by doing two orders.
My favorite grocery store chain does the blue versus white bags. Blue bags are for refrigerated/frozen items. Makes it MUCH easier, even if they do the bagging for me.
A discounted fish pie?!! I don’t even know what a fish pie is, but that just sounds so sad! 🙁 can’t he finagle a dinner invite from one of the many other royals that also live in Kensington palace?
Yes, self-checkouts are huge here in England. I rarely use anything else.
I wonder if Harry has a MyWaitrose card, and if he gets the free drink?
Uhm…I’m not his biggest fan, but I suppose I could cook for him. I mean, frozen meals? What good is that? So if he wants to trade for real good home made food and candle light dinner, I’d volunteer. Just saying.
Ready meals are fresh, not frozen. Think the prepared meals in the meat section. Or really just lament the terrible selection of ready meals in the US compared to the UK. I absolutely love how much choice there is for prepared/ready meals in Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury etc. Working folks and singletons have it easy in the meal prep department over there.
I prefer self checkout because I often don’t feel like social interaction w strangers. It always works fine for me.
Waitrose is the nicer of the supermarkets.
Discounted frozen meals meals reminds me of this quite smelly english ” bachelor” I used to share a flat with in London He never ate anything but shepherds pie and fish pies or whatever pie was on discount.
Can I just say Harry and Joss are super cute together! I could see these two long-term.
And pardon me, I realize I got something mixed up a few posts ago, I thought Ellie had performed at a Sentebale event in Africa in the past year, but realize it was Joss! For those interested, Google Joss Stone, Prince Harry, Sentebale Daily Mail November 27, 2015
I always thought they would make a cute pair. I remember she also played at the Diana concert – I think a duet with Tom Jones? And they had an impromptu interview with William, Harry and Joss about it beforehand with the press. I think they asked William if Kate was attending and Joss just bursted out laughing. It was cute.
Looking at/having your eyes graze across discounted foods is not the same as buying them. Yeah, he’s such a normal bloke, a man of the people.
We have self checkouts in pretty much all chain supermarkets these days. I use them more than I go to the cashier, particularly as I live in central london and often only pick up a few things at a time from a small ‘tesco express’ or ‘sainsburys local’.
Lack of BIG supermarkets in Central is one of my pet peeves.
It’s a shame Joss has a boyfriend, they seem like they’d make a lovely couple.
I love Harry but this is what the Queen would call a stunt and I agree. You don’t need to do it Harry. Your PR isn’t in the toilet like your big brother and his wife.
The checkout people in California are mostly union workers so I use them instead of self-checkout. I would rather keep them employed in a decent job than pay the same price to check myself out with the machine that replaces them.
Waitrose is hardly a discount store though. It’s the most expensive of the British supermarkets. Majority of Brits wouldn’t be able to afford it on a regular basis for everyday groceries. Now if he’d popped into a tesco, lidl, aldi or asda (walmart) then might be article worthy.
The self serve machines here very rarely ever require assistance and when they do it’s almost always because the user arsed something up. You’d think the machines in the US would be more sophisticated than the ones in Aus.