The Times, the Sun and a mysterious Royal cleaner

Anne Simmons, a cleaner who worked for the Royal Family for more than a decade, has been a go-to contact for much of the media this year, spilling the beans on her time at Buckingham Palace and offering tips on sprucing up your own home. Beginning with a piece in the Times back in March – which explained how she “started as a general cleaner before becoming a senior member of the team, overseeing deep cleaning in key areas” – Simmons has since become a familiar face across papers and websites.

Since the Times piece she’s been quoted by the Sun, Express, Mail, Hello!, New York Post and more, with only one problem – Simmons never worked for the Royal Family, and almost certainly doesn’t exist.

Trade journal Press Gazette probed the cleaner’s credentials and found there was no record of anyone called ‘Anne Simmons’ having worked for Buckingham Palace, either as staff or an outside contractor – and, as it pointed out, even if she had she would have had to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

All the pieces appear to have been provided to the media outlets via press releases on behalf of various companies for whom Simmons was described as a “brand ambassador”, meaning the journalists whose bylines adorned the stories didn’t actually speak to her. And only one picture of ‘Simmons’ appears to exist, showing her sitting on a sofa.

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The companies include Edit Suits, Plumbworld, Playcasino, Plates Express and Pure Window Cleaning and most stories included links to their websites – highly valuable because they can boost their search engine rankings.

As Press Gazette points out: “Most of the pieces featuring Simmons featured prominent links to Plumbworld, a plumbing company which was linked last week to PR agencies Signal the News and Relay the Update, which have been bombarding journalists with press releases featuring seemingly fake case studies in recent months.”

The journal did contact each company following its investigation in a bid to uncover who the mysterious Simmons is, but got no reply from any of them. And as for the media outlets who appear to have been hoodwinked? They’ve very quietly deleted the stories from their websites, although alas for the Times, their original story can still be found archived online. “

There isn’t any chore that fazes the team at the Palace,” it cheers. “Cleaning up after the dogs, or after the Donalld… it’s all in a day’s work for the royal cleaners.” And indeed for dodgy PR types!