One of my many duties as royal correspondent during the Queen Mother’s lifetime was to make frequent late-night phone calls to enquire about her health.
The reason for this was that I would often get calls from the Sun editors at 10pm saying, ‘We’ve had an anonymous call from a woman with a beautiful voice telling us that the Queen Mum is dead!’
Even though I had said it was highly unlikely that there would be an official announcement late at night, they insisted that I call.
The answer was always the same: ‘No, Her Majesty is well and alive!’
But at one point, the day after I made one of my “deadbeat” calls, I wasn’t expecting a call from her office at all.
The voice – ironically a plum-voiced woman, but I recognised her as an aide to the Queen Mother – said, ‘Her Majesty wishes you to know that she is feeling very well and has no plans to leave this world any time soon. So, you can take the evening off!’
The Queen Mother with William Tallon, her butler, in 1982. He was nicknamed ‘Backstairs Billy’
During World War II, Adolf Hitler said the Queen Mother was the most dangerous woman in Europe. Above: The royal couple speaks to war-weary Britons in 1945
When a bomb landed and exploded on Buckingham Palace, the Queen Mother declared: ‘Now I can look the East End in the eye’. Above: Queen Elizabeth and King George inspect the damage to Buckingham Palace with Prime Minister Winston Churchill after a bombing raid, September 1940
The King and Queen were seen visiting patients in a bomb-damaged hospital in 1940
The Queen Mother looks at her ‘beloved Bertie’ during a visit to the Lord Roberts Memorial Centre in Inverness in 1948
And at a press reception during a trip to Canada, the Queen Mother choked on her drink as she said with a smile: “Ah, gentlemen, are you here to collect more material for my obituary?”
During her lifetime, she was as famous for her clever remarks, pointed observations and dry drinking as for her membership of the royal family.
She was also known for her fondness for ‘drinky-poos’ – usually a gin and Dubonnet or three.
Her love of drink led one stable master to describe her not so much as an alcoholic as “a devoted drinker.”
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was born 124 years ago in Victorian times, on August 4, 1900. That was the same year that the British first tasted Coca-Cola.
Queen Victoria had only just come to the throne and her life is a history of Britain in the 20th century.
She married a member of the royal family and was happy to be a duchess, but her fate changed at the hands of her unfaithful brother-in-law, King Edward VIII.
When he gave up the throne to marry the divorced American Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth’s lover Bertie became a nervous King George VI.
During World War II, Adolf Hitler described the Queen Mother as the most dangerous woman in Britain, because of the morale boost she gave the British by refusing to take her two daughters to Canada.
And when a bomb exploded at Buckingham Palace, she said: ‘Now I can look the East End in the eye.’
Make no mistake, this was a woman who had the power behind the throne.
She transformed a stammering George VI into a confident king who led his people through the trauma of a world war.
In other words, she was a tough cookie. High society photographer Cecil Beaton once described her as “a marshmallow made on a welding machine.”
Despite her stoic demeanor in difficult times, the Queen Mother was also known for her one-liners.
It is said that her humor kept her going until her death at age 101 in March 2002.
Once, at a dinner at Hillsborough Castle, she responded to the faithful toast by inviting everyone to raise a glass not just to “the people of Northern Ireland”, but to each of the six counties – one by one.
At the end, the guests were swaying on their feet, while an elderly general staggered off to throw up in the umbrella stand in the entrance hall. The Queen Mother remained clear-headed throughout.
The wreckage of Hallsville School (known as Agate Street Infants), East London, after it was hit in a German air raid, killing 75 people
Fifty years later, in 1990, the Queen Mother attended the same school in the East End
The Queen Mother kept her promise to the East End and visited it whenever she could. One of her most famous visits was to the Queen’s Head pub in Flamborough Street, Limehouse, in 1987. She was 87 years old at the time and stopped at Young and Co’s pub to pull and drink a pint of their Special Bitter.
Alcohol played a major role in her life, prompting one equerry to describe her not as an alcoholic but as ‘a devoted drinker’. Above: The Queen Mother enjoys a drink as she takes part in the traditional ‘Wayfairers Dole’ at the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester, 1986
The Queen Mother celebrates her 95th birthday with her butler William ‘Backstairs Billy’ Tallon, grandson Prince Charles and great-grandsons Prince Harry and Prince William, the former Prince of Wales, with Prince Harry and Prince William, 1995
After trying for a while to summon one of her staff for a drink, she went downstairs to find her footman, William ‘Backstairs Billy’ Tallon, rowing with his colleague and on-off friend, Reg Wilcock.
When she saw them, she asked curtly, in a not at all politically correct manner, “Would one of you old queens like to buy this old queen a drink?”
Once she spoke of her fondness for helicopters, saying, “The helicopter has made more difference to my life than to any queen’s since Anne Boleyn.”
She was good friends with the playwright and entertainer Noel Coward and had invited him to lunch at Buckingham Palace.
He accompanied her as she inspected the guard.
The Queen Mother glanced at Noel and saw his gaze settle on an attractive young soldier.
The Queen Mother leaned over to him and said, ‘If I were you, Noel, I wouldn’t do that… they count them before they go back.’
Towards the end of her life she had lunch with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, who the Queen Mother said was a very good pianist.
“We played the piano and sang old variety songs all afternoon,” she said.
When her groom came to pick her up late that afternoon, he found the couple singing Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s A Dustman. “I think there was something in my drink,” she later claimed.