A Scots Guardsman who uploaded a video to TikTok showing himself gyrating against his rifle outside Windsor Castle was sacked from the army for taking cocaine, it has emerged.
Jimmie Straughan, 23, was unrepentant after he posted the clip — which had thousands of views — and claimed that Queen Elizabeth had complained about his unusual behaviour while he was guarding the royal family.
In the video, filmed in March 2020, Straughan grinds against his firearm before saying: “I’m meant to be looking after the royal family. Currently staring at two ducks. Do I care? No.”
Straughan, from Berwick-upon-Tweed, was discharged from the army in March 2022 after he failed a drugs test. He has since claimed that cocaine use was “rampant” in the Household Division.
During his time guarding Windsor Castle, Straughan said, he was the subject of a complaint after the Queen saw him “larking around”. On one occasion he filmed the monarch walking her corgis in the grounds.
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“I never got caught taking the video of the Queen walking her dogs with a footman, but she phoned up the guardroom and reported me for misbehaving on post,” he told Mail Online. “I got a bollocking, but nothing more than that. If they’d seen the video, I’d have been out on my ear.”
Straughan, who is now travelling in Australia, described his relief on leaving the army and the boredom soldiers felt while performing ceremonial duties. “Being kicked out was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “When you join the army, you’re sold a dream of travelling the world and going to exciting places, but when we were on ceremonial duties, it was just hell.”
He said soldiers guarding the Palace were “treated like shit” by members of the royal family. “Once we were put on punishment duty and made to crawl up the stairs on all fours. That was because a royal, I don’t know which one, complained that one soldier’s arm wasn’t at exactly 90 degrees when he was marching,” he said.
The army said: “We are aware of an old video being circulated on social media. Soldiers will be held to account where their social media usage contravenes our values and standards or they bring the army into disrepute.”
