Prince Andrew's former maid said she needed to perfectly arrange his collection of 72 teddy bears before bedtime otherwise he would lose his temper

• A former Buckingham Palace maid told The Sun she arranged Prince Andrew's teddy bear collection.

• Charlotte Briggs said the 72 toys needed to be placed "just right" otherwise he'd lose his temper.

• It comes as a former royal protection officer told Insider Andrew is a "bully" who terrorized staff.

A former Buckingham Palace maid told The Sun she had a full day of training on how to organize Prince Andrew's teddy bear collection before he went to bed.

Charlotte Briggs, who told the publication she worked for the royal household in the 1990s when she was 21, said she was taught how to arrange the Duke of York's stuffed toy collection soon after she got the job. Briggs, now 47, said she would spend up to 30 minutes an evening arranging them to Andrew's preference.

Andrew would have been 35 in 1995, during the time Briggs said she worked for the palace. Her claims also follow those of royal expert Ingrid Seward, who told The Sun she saw about "a dozen teddy bears" on his bed when visiting his then-wife Sarah Ferguson in 1990.

You Magazine's Elizabeth Day previously wrote about encountering an "oversized teddy bear" while waiting to interview Andrew at his Buckingham Palace apartment in 2009, which he told her was a wedding gift from Ferguson.

"I remember that he found this extremely funny, even several years after the event. It seemed rather strange to me that a grown man should be so amused by the presence of a stuffed toy," Day wrote.

But according to Briggs' interview with The Sun's Paul Sims, maintenance of the teddy bear collection was a very serious task.

"As soon as I got the job, I was told about the teddies and it was drilled into me how he wanted them," she said. "I even had a day's training. Everything had to be just right. It was so peculiar."

"But he absolutely loved the ­teddies and was very clear about how he wanted them arranged," Briggs, who also told The Sun Andrew once "laughed" after hearing she was bitten by his dog, added.

Former Buckingham Palace staff say Andrew would lose his temper with them

Briggs said Andrew would lose his temper if the stuffed toys, most of which she said were dressed as sailors, weren't in the specific placements he wanted them to be in.

Representatives for Andrew declined to comment for this article.

"It took me half an hour to arrange them — most bizarre thing to be paid for," she added. "Then at bedtime I had to take all the teddies off and arrange them around the room. They each had a set place. We had to stack the smaller ones in an unused fireplace, again in size order, to make them look pretty."

Paul Page, a former royal protection officer interviewed in the ITV documentary "Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile" that aired in the UK last week, also said Andrew kept "about 50 or 60 stuffed toys" on his bed.

The documentary explores the relationship between Andrew, deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite found guilty of five of six sex-trafficking charges in December. It comes as the Duke of York, who is currently facing a civil trial following sexual-assault accusations made by Virginia Giuffre, was stripped of his honorary military titles and patronages. Andrew has always rejected Giuffre's claims.

Page, who worked for the palace for six years and was jailed in 2009 for his involvement in a £3 million, just over $4 million, property scam according to The Independent, said there was a laminated card for Andrew's staff with a picture outlining where the bears should be placed.

"If those bears weren't put back in the right order by the maids, he would shout and scream and become verbally abusive," Page alleged in the film.

Speaking to Insider on Thursday, Page said staff in the royal household, including Buckingham Palace maids, were afraid to issue complaints about Andrew's behavior because he was the Queen's "favorite son." He said staff would be seen as "troublemakers" and could potentially lose their positions for speaking out.

He called the Duke of York a "bully" who has been "terrorizing people in the palace for the last 30 to 40 years."

Buckingham Palace did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Insider