Princess Anne's hair-raising 'wig' leaves fans with serious questions

Princess Anne has stayed loyal to an updo since her youth, but newly unearthed footage of her 80s hairdo has left fans perplexed.

The royal took part in Sir Michael Parkinson's talk show Parkinson in Australia in October 1983, giving a fascinating interview about life in the Firm and recalling the "strenuous" 1970 tour with her family.

A resurfaced video clip of one of the conversation's most humorous moments has gone viral – but it's Anne's hair that people can’t stop talking about.

The Princess Royal's iconic bouffant appeared to have reached new heights, defying gravity with its thickness. No doubt a liberal amount of hairspray had been applied to tease her roots upright – it was the 80s, after all!

Comments from fans have been flooding in discussing her hair. "Is she wearing a wig?" one asked. "That’s her real hair," another replied.

"Wow! Her hair," a third disbelieving fan shared, while another joked: "That hair is impenetrable! ".

Princess Anne's iconic interview with Sir Michael Parkinson

The footage in question is from one of the 76-year-old royal's most iconic archival interviews. During another particularly amusing section, Michael Parkinson asked the Princess Royal whether she "speaks Australian".

Anne replied: "Not strictly speaking, no I don’t. I mean, I enjoy listening to it and I suppose inevitably one occasionally picks up the odd word."

She then went on to recount an amusing incident from her first royal tour of Australia, during which she mistook the words "to die" for "today"(both sound similar in an Australian accent).

Princess Anne's hair philosophy

As well as her dry sense of humour, Princess Anne will go down in history for her no-nonsense approach to beauty.

She addressed her hair routine in the TV documentary Princess Anne: The Princess Royal at 70, touching upon comments made by actress Erin Doherty, who portrayed a young Anne in Netflix's The Crown.

Erin had confessed that replicating Anne's volume took almost two hours in the hair and makeup chair.

The Princess Royal said: "I read an article the other day about the actress playing me... she was talking about how long it took them to do her hair. I'm thinking, 'How could you possibly take that long?' I mean, it takes me 10 or 15 minutes."

A keen equestrian and a lover of the great outdoors, it seems Princess Anne’s trademark hairstyle is born out of practicality rather than anything else.