Queen Elizabeth II Once Hid in a Bush to Avoid Talking to a Buckingham Palace Guest

Royals, they’re just like us!

We’ve all been in a situation where we wanted to duck down and avoid seeing someone. Well, it looks like that’s something that also happened to Queen Elizabeth II.

In a new ITV documentary, titled Our Queen: Inside the Crown, the special shows the royal hiding in a bush to dodge one of her guests at Buckingham Palace—who was deemed controversial.

The moment took place in 1978, when Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu made a visit to Buckingham Palace.

And while many royal fans have pointed out that Queen Elizabeth has interacted with other questionable public figures such as Vladimir Putin, Syrian leader Bashar-Al-Assad and Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe, no one left an impact quite like Nicolae.

In the documentary, it explains that the Romanian dictator had a four-day visit to London with his wife Elena. Like most guests of Buckingham Palace, it’s customary to have a sit-down dinner.

However, this apparently didn’t bode well with the public, as he wasn’t generally like by U.K. folks.

“The press started to question the foreign secretary,” Robert Hardman said in the documentary, which aired on Thursday.

He noted that people began asking: “Why are we inviting this monster to come to Britain?”

Upon the Ceaușescus’ arrival, the queen and Prince Philip greeted the couple at London’s Victoria train station, according to the documentary. They all took an open-top carriage ride to Buckingham Palace.

Despite being courteous and following royal protocol, apparently Queen Elizabeth couldn’t stand interacting with the Romanian dictator.

Cue the moment she decided to hide behind a bush in order to avoid Nicolae.

“On the occasion when they were staying she took the corgis out for a walk in the palace gardens and she could see the Ceaușescus coming the other way,” Hardman shared in the documentary. “She thought, ‘I really can’t face talking to them,’ so the first and only time in her life, she actually hid in a bush in the palace gardens to avoid her guests.”

Adding to the story, British Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen, said in the documentary: “The Queen puts up with many different people, but Ceaușescu was too much for her. She made it quite plain she didn’t like that visit!”

It’s unknown if Ceaușescu noticed Queen Elizabeth II hiding behind a bush to avoid him. However, one thing is clear: the royal is an expert at dodging her guests.