King Charles may have a full schedule of royal events, travel, and red box preparations, but it seems he still has time to enjoy hot gossip about politics and politicians.

"Prince Charles loves political gossip and wants to be kept informed about what is going on behind the scenes," a source told the Daily Express.

He seems to be following in the footsteps of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth. Former Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon also liked political gossip and said she tried to know the "real story" behind newspaper reports. "She liked a little bit of gossip," Sturgeon said on the podcast "Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth." 'She liked to hear what was going on in the political world. She would ask me what she had read in the papers and what the real story was here."

Sturgeon said.

Prince Charles himself was no stranger to political controversy, the Daily Express reported. He has "often come under fire for seemingly violating the sacred royal rule of non-partisanship," the paper wrote. In 2015, for example, the then-crown prince "sent a flurry of secret letters to ministers in an attempt to influence government policy," the Daily Express reported; the 27 letters, sent between September 2004 and March 2005, were known as "black spider" notes because of his spiraling handwriting, and were the subject of a 10-year The letters were made public after a legal battle that lasted over a decade. The letters revealed that the heir to the throne had lobbied the prime minister and other senior ministers about the defense budget, the national curriculum, and the badger cull. [More recently, Prince Charles is said to have described the government's controversial policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda as "horrifying," and has also come under fire for advocating environmental protection and warning against climate change, with some accusing him of going too deep into political material.

"Prince Charles, who acceded to the throne last September, has worked hard to eschew what many call political interference and to uphold the principle that the monarch is above politics," the Daily Express reported.

Still, like the rest of us, he seems preoccupied with the juicy scoop.