The Queen was never off duty, but she clearly had a whale of a time
10.09.2022 - 09:31
/ msn.com
She sat in on a Cabinet meeting – the first monarch to do so for over a century. She also enjoyed a good tease of some of her more earnest prime ministers. At a G7 meeting of world leaders in 1991, Edward Heath, the pompous former prime minister, was filmed showing off about how brave he had been in going to Baghdad under Saddam Hussein.
The Queen exclaimed with a laugh, “But you’re expendable!”The Queen was not as keen on showbiz as her sister, Princess Margaret, who adored singing and was a friend of Peter Sellers and Noël Coward. But still, there were moments when she got into the swing of things in the Swinging Sixties. In November 1963, the Queen first met the Beatles at the Royal Variety Performance.
The band played From Me to You and She Loves You. Then John Lennon delivered his famous lines: “The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands… And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewellery. ”It went down well with the Queen.
In 1965, she gave all the Beatles the MBE, only for Lennon to return the honour in 1969 over Britain’s involvement in the Nigerian Civil War and its support of American forces in Vietnam. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr went on to be knighted. She had another dazzling showbiz moment in 2012 at the Olympic Games in London.
There, she appeared to jump out of a helicopter to parachute into the opening ceremony. The scene in fact used a stuntman. But she did graciously agree to film a segment with Daniel Craig as James Bond in Buckingham Palace, producing a major wow factor.
The Queen herself suggested she must do a speaking part – it was only appropriate, she said, because 007 had come to rescue her. And so she was heard to say, “Good evening, Mr Bond. ”She did a similar favour for her
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