Prince George is "passionate" about football

Mike told the Telegraph magazine: "George loves his football. I've played numerous times in the garden with him.

"He's passionate about Aston Villa, too. Wherever he is, he'll sit down and watch that game.

"They're just a family who love sport. Catherine loves her running."

Meanwhile, Mike - who has Mia, 10, Lena, six, and three-year-old Lucas with wife Zara Tindall - admitted his son is "a ninja" who loves "whacking" people with sticks and needs a lot of exercise every day.

He laughed: "You can't stop him. He wants physical contact. He wants to be wrestled.

"He imagines himself as a ninja, and he just walks around with sticks whacking people. He's such a typical boy, you almost have to run him into the ground with exercise, like a dog, otherwise he won't sleep.

"You're built that way. So, being fully masculine, which a lot of rugby players are, is not a bad thing."

Last year, Mike and his 'The Good, The Bad and The Rugby' podcast co-hosts Alex Payne and James Haskell secured an interview with Zara's mother Princess Anne, and William and Catherine in their capacities as patrons of Scottish, Welsh and English rugby respectively.

And while the royal trio impressed with their sporting knowledge and delighted fans with candid anecdotes, Mike wasn't surprised by the revelations.

He said: "It just came from seeing them in their most relaxed environment.

"These are the conversations we have when we're just talking to each other anyway.

"With Princess Anne, it's the conversation we have about rugby at Gloucester, or about Scotland after every Six Nations game. A lot of the time, it will be about a player. She'll say to me, 'Should he not be doing this more?' And I'll think, 'You're actually not that far off.'

"We were asking the same questions I had asked them before, but this time they were giving the answers to the public, rather than just to me."

However, James wasn't impressed by the catering at Windsor Castle.

He said: "I expected big trays loaded with scones and exotic fruit tarts. Instead, I got a couple of broken rich teas and what appeared to be a half-eaten malted milk - a leftover from a box of Family Circle biscuits...

"Luckily, I'd brought along an M+S sandwich, but when I started eating it, someone appeared and shooed me into a corridor. They'd been on red alert since our MD spilt coffee on what was probably a priceless Chippendale cabinet."