The ex-royal aide at Harry and Meghan’s side: Former actress Beth Herlihy, who played a stripper on Hollyoaks, joins walkabout as she remains loyal to Sussexes after being laid off by Kensington Palace

Harry and Meghan had a former Kensington Palace aide and soap opera stripper at their side during their faux-royal walkabout in Nottingham, the Daily Mail can reveal.

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’ $155,000-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 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 2018, 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. 

The scenes looked identical to their walkabout almost a decade ago – although the crowds appeared smaller in 2026.

Around 100 royal fans and well-wishers gathered to greet Harry and Meghan. The duchess beamed as she shook hands and took selfies with fans, including one boy who asked if she lived in a mansion and another who wanted to know whether she had a Bentley.

The visit came after the Sussexes were described as ‘private citizens’ by the King, who was in Wales with the Queen for an official engagement at the same time.

One of the duchess’ friends said Meghan does not see herself as a working royal and is instead more of a ‘full-time mum and entrepreneur’, adding that public events like this with her husband will be ‘rare’ for her.

The Sussexes were supporting a number of charities, including a community food project established in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and a recording studio where Meghan took part in an acting workshop.

In keeping with traditional royal engagements, the scores of photographers and journalists gathered outside were kept behind barriers, while media access inside the event was pooled.

Harry and Meghan are waiting to hear whether they will be granted taxpayer-funded security, with the duke said to fear a delay after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a review of security measures for the Royal Family and public figures in the wake of the death of Reform UK’s justice spokesperson Ann Widdecombe.

The duke and duchess are said to consider themselves ‘public figures’ and were caught off-guard by a letter to government stakeholders, authorised by the King, clarifying that they remain ‘private citizens’.

Meghan is hoping to launch As Ever in the UK by the end of this year.

READ MORE: Meghan and Harry share emotional reunion with Grenfell ‘ladies’ who cooked for grieving families in wake of fatal tower block fire