15 March 2024 , 07:00
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Like all parents, Prince William and Princess Kate like to make their children's birthdays extra special. But there is one tradition that the dad of three is not a fan of.
Kate has given an insight into her family's birthday rituals in the past - including the fact that she stays up until midnight making birthday cakes for Prince George, Princess Charlotte and little Prince Louis.
And it seems there is a special role that dad William also takes on - albeit with less enthusiasm.
One of Prince George's godparents is Julia Samuel, a good friend of the late Princess Diana. And she previously revealed the noisy tradition she has passed on to the Wales family.
She said: "I do to George what [Diana] did to us, which is give impossible toys that are really noisy and take a lot of making.
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"William then has to spend days putting them together. And then put all the machinery together, and it makes awful tooting noises and lights flashing and all of that."
She added that while poor William struggles for days on end to put together the tricky toys, the rest of the family takes great pleasure in watching him squirm - especially "cheeky" George at the time. She explained that it "makes [her] laugh, and it makes George laugh."
Julia talked about the sweet tradition when she was a guest on the podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day - in an episode in 2020 to mark what would have been Diana's 59th birthday. Diana never got to meet her grandchildren since she died following a car crash in Paris in August 1997 at the age of just 36.
Describing her adorable godson, Julia said he was "amazing" - adding her dear friend Diana would have adored him too. "He's funny and feisty and cheeky and God she [Diana] would have loved him so much," she said. "That is heartbreaking for all of them."
William has spoken in the past about the importance of keeping his mother's memory alive by making sure his children know all about their late grandmother.
During an appearance in the 2017 ITV documentary ‘Diana, Our Mother: Her Life and Legacy’, William "So we've got more photos up round the house now of her and we talk about her a bit and stuff.
"And it's hard because obviously Catherine didn't know her, so she cannot really provide that level of detail.
"So I do, regularly, putting George or Charlotte to bed, talk about her and just try and remind them that there are two grandmothers, there were two grandmothers in their lives. And so it's important that they know who she was and that she existed."
He later joked, "She'd be a nightmare grandmother, absolute nightmare!
"She'd love the children to bits, but... She'd come in probably at bath time, cause an amazing amount of scene, bubbles everywhere, bathwater all over the place ‒ and then leave."
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He added: "I want to make as much time and effort with Charlotte and George as I can because I realise that these early years particularly are crucial for children, and having seen what she did for us."