Mike Tindall has revealed that his grandmother-in-law Queen Elizabeth did something lovely for him and his wife Zara after her miscarriage two years ago.

The former rugby player was spending Christmas at Sandringham, the Queen's country estate, with Zara, Princess Anne's daughter shortly after they lost their baby. The Queen was too sick to attend the local church service that year and Zara and Mike weren't feeling up to it either, given what had happened. The monarch decided to hold a private service with them at home. "Two years ago, she wasn’t feeling very well and so she didn’t go to church, and we’d obviously been what we’d been through with our pregnancy that we lost, so we did our own little private - just as a three," Mike said on the House of Rugby podcast. Zara has suffered two miscarriages in the past. She and Mike are now mum and dad to four-year-old Mia and and six-month-old Lena. Mike also revealed what Christmas with the royal family is like. "Yeah it is good. "So Christmas Day is a little more quiet because it's actually a cold buffet because they give everyone the day off, and their big day is Christmas Eve." They like to watch Downton Abbey and the Queen's speech on the day itself, he added, and said that there's lots of food on offer throughout the day.