Prince William has admitted asking a bodyguard to pose as a sniper to put off an opponent in a football match.

The Duke of Cambridge told former England international Peter Crouch he was a marked man on the pitch as “everyone wanted to break my legs”.

The rough treatment became so bad that he once “got one of my policemen to take a laser pen out with them. And I got him to red mark, red dot one of the players.

“I kept saying, ‘See, see what happened to you’. I was about 15 at the time I said, ‘See, he’s following you, following you.'”

Crouch asked, laughing: “Pretending to have a sniper on him?” and William replied: “Exactly… it put him off for about, you know, 10 minutes.”

The pair spoke at Kensington Palace before the lockdown in March for the BBC’s That Peter Crouch Podcast, which also featured a catch-up video call earlier this month.

So, is the duke any good at the nation’s favourite sport? Apparently not, as William described himself as a “fat knacker running around at the back, panting”.

He even admitted abusing referees while watching his team, Aston Villa, but only “in my head”, he said, “because I’m the president of the FA and I can’t do that”.

As the chat moved on to their partners, Crouch confessed to buying his model wife Abbey Clancy a raincoat three years running.

The duke said the worst present he had bought his wife Kate was a pair of binoculars, and “she’s never let me forget that.”

With Crouch laughing, he added: “It didn’t go well. Honestly, I have no idea why I bought her a pair of binoculars, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

His favourite karaoke song, he revealed, is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and lockdown home schooling made him realise “I can’t do a year two maths”.

At the start of the podcast, William answered a knock at the room door and was handed a takeaway curry from Crouch’s local Indian restaurant in Ealing, west London.

The duke quipped: “There’s an Uber driver out there on the floor being frisked,” and when asked about his favourite Indian dish, replied: “Chicken masala, love that, a bit of flavour – I’m not a vindaloo man, put it that way.”

The prince washed the meal down with what appeared to be a pint of lager, while the rest of the group mostly sipped Guinness.

The duke has been spearheading the Heads Up campaign to get football fans talking about their problems.

He said: “We all have mental health, and we all have to stay mentally fit.

“It’s a strength to talk about your mental health, it’s not a weakness. You know, if you’re not feeling well, something’s bothering you, talk about it – it’s not a problem.”

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