In the television programme ‘Prince William at Thirty’, uploaded to YouTube in June 2012, a student who lived in the room next to Kate’s gave some interesting insight into the university life of Prince William and his future wife. Helen McArdle said the future Duchess of Cambridge was known as ‘Beautiful Kate’ in their halls of residence. Kate and William both lived in St Salvator’s halls at St Andrews University in their first year, which is how they met and became friends.

Ms McArdle said: “I was in the room next door to Kate Middleton in first year.

“She was known as ‘Beautiful Kate’ almost from day one.”

“She certainly became very good friends with William and his friends from Eton very quickly – they seemed to form a very tight group.”

Kate and William met within days of arriving at St Andrews and quickly formed a firm friendship.

Jules Knight, a university friend of William’s, said: “Will and Kate were able to become friends because Kate was in the same year and in the same halls, so they were able to develop their friendship.”

Thanks to an agreement between the Royal Family and the press to leave William alone until he graduated, the pair were able to get to know each other in private.

After they began dating in 2003, they managed 18 months before it came out in the press.

Ms McArdle, however, worked it out sooner.

Recalling the moment she realised Kate and William were a couple, she described an intimate moment between the two of them she spotted while in a bar in St Andrews.

She said: “In terms of their social life they went to some of the more upmarket bars in St Andrews.

“Ma Bells was a popular drinking location for them, also known as Yah Bells in St Andrews.

“And I remember seeing the two of them at the bar and him pinching her bottom and that was the first time I remember thinking ‘Well, they’re definitely a couple then’.”

She also recalled a couple of incidents when Kate and William engaged in the classic university tradition of drinking too much.

Ms McArdle said one night Kate had to be carried back to her room by one of William’s friends from Eton because she was “paralytically drunk” and couldn’t walk.

On another occasion, she said, William came home drunk and fell into a bush outside their halls of residence.

William had to be “retrieved” by his own bodyguards.

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