Moment no-nonsense volunteer ignores Meghan’s ‘performative’ questions about filling a food bag during Nottingham visit

A volunteer at a food bank visited by Meghan Markle has become a surprise social media star for her no-nonsense attitude during the Sussexes’ quasi-royal visit to Nottingham. 

One of their stops was the food poverty action group Himmah, where Prince Harry, 42, and Meghan, 45, were reunited with the Grenfell ‘ladies’ in emotional scenes. 

But it was business as usual for one of the volunteers, who seemed irked by the barrage of questions as she showed Meghan how to pack a donation bag. 

In the clip posted on X, the blonde-haired woman began her demonstration by telling Meghan the task was ‘not very difficult’ and held up a bag for her to fill as they stood in front of a crate full of baked beans. 

Seemingly confused, Meghan asked whether she should go to ‘another station’, but the volunteer shook her head and authoritatively told Meghan to take the bag and follow her.  

Royal watchers were baffled by the Duchess’s ‘performative’ stream of questions considering the task was so ‘basic’, with one writing on X: ‘It’s wild how she doesn’t understand how an operation of that kind works.’ 

During their visit to Himmah, the Sussexes also shared an emotional reunion with four women who cooked for grieving families in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Prince Harry and Meghan kissed, hugged and held hands with the Grenfell ‘ladies’, who helped feed families devastated by the 2017 tragedy that claimed 72 lives.

It comes after the Daily Mail revealed that Harry and Meghan had a former Kensington Palace aide and soap opera stripper at their side during their faux-royal walkabout in Nottingham. 

As the couple shook hands with supporters, Beth Herlihy was discreetly following behind, helping to carry flowers and balloons handed to them by the loving crowd.

The Sussexes’ $117,000-a-year programme coordinator is the co-founder of PR boutique Herlihy Loughran, having previously worked for the Royal Family before becoming one of Harry and Meghan’s most trusted aides.

On Thursday, she travelled to Nottingham with the couple after helping to plan their engagements in the city, walking a few paces behind them as they worked the 100-strong crowd.

Footage also showed her ushering schoolchildren into position shortly before Harry and Meghan arrived to cheers.

But before entering royal circles, Ms Herlihy had a rather different career as a soap actress, including a role as a stripper in a Hollyoaks spin-off.

Appearing under her stage name Bethan Coundley, she played Honey in two episodes of Channel 4’s Hollyoaks Later in 2011.

Her character slept with a man and drugged him, causing him to hallucinate that he had beaten her to death with an axe.

The ruse unravelled when a fake burial site was discovered to contain the body of a pig rather than a human corpse.

Ms Herlihy also took part in a number of racy photoshoots, including one in 2012 in which she posed in 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’.

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 $155,000 (£116,000) for its strategic advisory services. In 2022, Herlihy Loughran was paid $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 talking with the Prince at the Invictus Games in Germany. The pair chatted in the stands as they watched a wheelchair basketball match between Team UK and Ukraine in Düsseldorf.

And it would seem that Ms Herlihy has remained loyal to the Sussexes after they decided to return to the UK after six years living in Montecito, California.

Dressed in black trousers, a beige sweater and suede boots, Ms Herlihy was close at hand as Harry and Meghan carried out a series of charity visits in Nottingham – nine years after their first royal visit as an engaged couple.