Fans of the Netflix period drama “The Crown” were probably shocked to learn that in 1982,
a man snuck into the heavily guarded Buckingham Palace and made his way to the Queen’s bedroom.
While the two didn’t actually have the heart to heart portrayed on the show, the true story of
Michael Fagan’s stunt is even more bizarre. Today on Nutty History, it’s the man who successfully
trespassed into Buckingham Palace - twice! And apparently had a ball. Early in the morning of
July 9th, 1982, Queen Elizabeth the second awoke to the rustle of a curtain. The culprit wasn’t one
of her beloved corgis or one of the many servants who lived and worked in Buckingham Palace, but
rather a complete and bleeding stranger, holding a broken fragment of a glass ashtray: 32-year-old
Michael Fagan. The queen was reasonably a bit put off by her surprise bedside guest and,
according to Fagan, asked him what he was doing there before running in her nightgown and barefeet
to phone security. While the two might not have gotten well acquainted during the bizarre meeting,
the puzzling incident left all of England wondering how a complete rando managed not only
to breach the security of one of the country’s most heavily guarded estates, but to make it
to the bedroom of the dang Queen of England herself. All while ten drinks deep, by the way.
Yeah...Fagan claims he had about ten servings of whiskey in his system when he scaled the 14 foot
perimeter wall of Buckingham Palace - a wall topped with revolving spikes and barbed wire.
After that little jaunt, Fagan shimmied up a drain pipe toward the palace roof.
Is this guy spiderman? From there, he took off his socks and sandals
and left them on the roof (it’s only polite, after all) before climbing into an unlocked
office window. If you’re thinking all of this activity might have triggered an alarm or two,
you’re correct. But police figured the alarm was malfunctioning and silenced it. Good one, guys.
After a quick stroll around the palace corridors, Michael made his way to the royal apartments,
where he broke the ashtray and started bleeding, which probably didn’t help
him give off non-threatening vibes as he woke up the queen from her beauty sleep. Though the queen
attempted to ring a palace alarm, and phoned the palace switchboard to send the police,
six minutes passed with no rescue. Awkward. The queen phoned again, then found a nearby
maid who helped distract Fagan with the promise of a cigarette. Next up in stalling tactics was
the Queen’s footman. Yep, apparently that’s a real thing. He offered Michael a glass of scotch until
the police arrived. With hospitality like that, sign me up to be a Buckingham Palace trespasser.
Perhaps the most mind boggling part of Michael Fagan’s intrusion into Buckingham Palace
is that it wasn’t his first time. About a month earlier, Fagan, on a complete whim,
had climbed the same drain pipe to an open window on the roof, this time getting in
through a maid’s room. The maid obviously went straight to security, but after checking her
room and finding no one, they decided she was probably just imagining it. This super
competent security team thought that it was much more likely that an adult woman misinterpreted
a nightmare than it was that someone had bypassed their Fort Knox level operation.
During his first stint in the ‘ham, Fagan, who is either the luckiest trespasser ever
or secretly an action hero, wandered around snacking on cheese and crackers,
later likening himself to Goldilocks. Those crumbs are giving us more of a Hansel and Gretel feel,
but okay. According to Michael, who might not be the world’s most reliable narrator,
he passed rooms labeled for Charles and Diana while searching for the loo.
He couldn’t find one, but he did find several bins of corgi food instead.
As he was getting ants in his pants, he decided that peeing on the carpet would be downright rude,
so he urinated in the corgi food instead. I feel like we didn’t exhaust all the options here,
Mike...After his bathroom break, Fagan drank half a bottle of wine out of Prince Charles’ room,
which he described as a “cheap Californian.” Apparently spending an hour inside Buckingham
Palace automatically makes anyone a wine snob. The remaining items on his spontaneous itinerary
included sampling the thrones and checking out the royal artwork. After doing all of that,
surely he was caught? NOPE. Instead Fagan just kind of got bored and bounced. He described
getting out as more difficult than getting in. He eventually found a door out to the gardens
and casually scaled another wall out. As to why Michael Fagan decided to break into Buckingham?
Even he’s not really sure. Although he does think it could be related to a large amount of mushrooms
he took that he claims left him high for two years. At the time, Fagan’s intrusion was a
civil offense rather than a criminal one. He was only charged with theft of Charles’s bad wine,
and even those charges were dropped after he was committed for psychiatric evaluation.
He was released from a psychiatric hospital after three months, but went down permanently in history
as the Batman of Buckingham. Okay, so maybe we coined that term, but let us know in the
comments if you have a better nickname for the Queen’s mysterious bedroom intruder.