BBC presenter Clare Balding has shared her own sweet and funny anecdote about the Queen today – as tributes to the late Monarch continue to pour in from across the UK and the world.
The broadcaster, 51, who was reported from Buckingham Palace this morning for BBC Breakfast, said she once had an incident involving a sausage while eating breakfast with the Queen.
Clare explained she once ‘grabbed’ a sausage from the floor after it ‘shot off her plate’ during breakfast with the Queen – and said while the monarch’s eyebrows were raised by the incident, she ‘didn’t say a word.’
The presenter has known the Queen for much of her life – her father Ian Balding was the Queen’s racehorse trainer, and the two women now share a love of horses and racing.
Her story comes after former Prime Minister Theresa May reduced the House of Commons to bits yesterday when she shared an awkward incident with a rogue cheese at as Balmoral picnic.
BBC presenter Clare Balding has shared her own sweet and funny anecdote about the Queen today – as tributes to the late Monarch continue to pour in from across the UK and the world
The broadcaster, 51, who was reported from Buckingham Palace this morning for BBC Breakfast, said she once had an incident involving a sausage while eating breakfast with the Queen (pictured, together)
‘I feel so much better since Theresa May told that story about the cheese yesterday,’ Clare said.
‘I had a similar incident with a sausage at the breakfast table. I tried to cut it to put it on toast and it ended up shooting across the table and the Queen was sitting at the end of the table.
‘And I grabbed the sausage and put it back on the toast and she did raise an eyebrow and I thought “okay, we’ll be alright here”,’ Clare added.
Theresa May was the unlikely comedic first turn in parliament yesterday as politicians and religious leaders shared their heartwarming personal memories of the Queen following her death.
The former prime minister had MPs laughing as she recounted an incident with a rogue cheese at a Balmoral picnic yesterday
The former prime minister, known for her serious demeanor, had MPs laughing as she recounted an incident with a rogue cheese at a Balmoral picnic.
She was among a number of MPs who mixed fond lighthearted memories in with the more somber tributes that followed the monarch’s death on Thursday.
The Archbishop of Canterbury also dryly remarked on his ‘fortitude’ as he recounted in the Lords the experience of a winter barbecue with the Royal Family at Sandringham. He also remarked on her ‘dry sense of humour’, adding: ‘The Church of England was very capable of giving her material.’
Mr May reduced the whole House of Commons to laughter with a story about the Queen and some dropped cheese.
The Maidenhead MP said: ‘Her Majesty loved the countryside, and she was down to earth and a woman of common sense.
‘I remember one picnic at Balmoral, which was taking place in one of the bothies on the estate. The hampers came from the castle, and we all mucked in to put the food and drink out on the table.
She was among a number of MPs who mixed fond lighthearted memories in with the more sombre tributes that followed the monarch’s death yesterday.
‘I picked up some cheese, put it on a plate and was transferring it to the table. The cheese fell on the floor. I had a split-second decision to make.’
Mrs May paused as MPs burst into laughter, before adding: ‘I picked up the cheese, put it on the plate and put it on the table. I turned round to see that my every move had been watched very carefully by Her Majesty the Queen.
‘I looked at her. She looked at me and she just smiled. And the cheese remained on the table.’
Afterward, Dame Andrea Leadsom, the former minister, recounted her own experience with the Queen at Christmas.
Recounting a January visit to Sandringham for a Privy Council meeting she told MPs: ‘I recall the Queen saying what a busy Christmas she had had. And I suggested well at last her family didn’t have to pause Christmas lunch for the Queen’s speech.
‘Which she told me they most certainly did. As per all of us, the family would pause Christmas lunch and watch the Queen’s speech and Princess Charlotte had run over to the tv screen and said ”look there’s gan-gan”. Very heartwarming.’
In the Lords, The Most Rev Justin Welby sparked laughter in as he recounted the holding of barbeques in January at the late Queen’s country seat of Sandringham in Norfolk.
He said: ‘One of the greatest privileges of sitting on these benches is that within a year or so of becoming a diocesan bishop you are invited to spend a weekend at Sandringham and there, often in January, you go for a barbeque – fortitude.’
He went on: ‘And you have the enormous gift given to you of being able to spend time with her late Majesty, with her family, with the jigsaw puzzle and all the other things that are there.
‘Thus on behalf of these benches I know from the conversations we have among ourselves that there is a profound sense of personal sorrow and an even more profound sense of the significance of the virtues of the characteristics of the late Queen.’
The top cleric sparked further laughter when he added: ‘She had a dry sense of humour and the ability to spot the absurd. The Church of England was very capable of giving her material. But she never exercised that at the expense of others.
‘Her memory when I last saw her in June was as sharp as it could ever have been. She remembered meetings 40, 50 years ago and drew on lessons from those times to speak of today and what we needed to learn.’
When former Labour leader and shadow climate change secretary Ed Miliband met Her Majesty when his wife became a High Court Judge in 2019, becoming a dame.
He told the Commons: ‘We were both invited to the Palace to meet Her Majesty, and Her Majesty fixed me with her gaze, as we saw each other and said, “oh, it’s you”.
‘She said, “what are you doing here?”, knowing full well why I was there, and we had a wonderful conversation.
‘And there she was at 93 still full of vim, vigour, and humour.’
Former leader of the Conservative Party Sir Iain Duncan Smith resigned his post in 2003 and said the moment was something the Queen was ‘pretty much used to’.
The Archbishop of Canterbury also dryly remarked on his ‘fortitude’ as he recounted in the Lords the experience of a winter barbecue with the Royal Family at Sandringham.
He also remarked on her ‘dry sense of humour’, adding: ‘The Church of England was very capable of giving her material.’
After the Queen asked Sir Iain to take leave of her officially, he was brought into Buckingham Palace’s drawing room.
‘I was struck by two or three things,’ he told the Commons on Friday. ‘One was the two bar electric fire which had a very strange piece of cardboard cut out in the shape of flames, coloured with crayons…
‘The other was the tupperware radio sitting next to her which I hadn’t seen since my parents smashed their last one, then she sweetly asked me how I was being clearly sympathetic about what had happened.
‘I just shrugged and said “well ma’am, nobody died and I’m still here”, whereupon she roared with laughter and the funny thing was as she did she paused, looking at me, not sure whether I had actually made a joke.
‘I laughed too and then she laughed again – whether at me or with me I couldn’t figure that out.’
And on her beloved Corgis, leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ed Davey told the Commons of a silver cylinder which he ‘wondered what treasures it might hold’.
‘I had my suspicions when as dessert was served her beloved Corgis were let in and nestled themselves around her feet,’ he said on Friday.
‘The Queen lifted up the lid of the cylinder, plucked out some digestive biscuits and begun sneaking them to her grateful dogs.’
Conservative MP for Taunton Deane, Rebecca Pow, recalled when the Queen made a visit to her constituency in 1987 – the first visit by a monarch for almost 500 years – since the Monmouth Rebellion and the ‘infamous’ Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685.
The royals at the time were almost overthrown. Ms Pow went on to tell the tale: ‘It’s a well-known story in my constituency that Queen Victoria was passing through the west country on the train to Devon…
‘And when she was passing through Taunton, she asked for all the blinds to be put down because she didn’t want to see rebellious Taunton.
‘The train stopped in Taunton and a civil party was waiting for her – but she refused to alight.
‘Many many years later this incident was related to the Duke of Edinburgh and he was absolutely furious so of course he shared the story with Her Majesty The Queen – and she determined to set the record straight.
‘That’s why in 1987 she made that visit to Taunton – and we still thank her for it, we’re back in the good books… hopefully that can happen to the rest of us! Similar things going on in this place [The Commons].
‘I think it demonstrates just that power that she always wanted to set the record straight [and] to be fair.’
The Tory MP also recounted the time she met the Queen in 1985 when she was working for the National Farmer’s Union in Taunton when she ran organisation called The Taste of Somerset.
‘I had to set up a big marquee running at the Royal Bath and West Show of which Her Majesty was a patron,’ she told The Commons on Friday evening. ‘I was given the honour of giving her a Taste of Somerset hamper.
‘I was absolutely beside myself with nerves… I had the outfit made, I had the hair done, practised the curtsy.
‘Along she came and she was utterly charming and delightful – and all she had to do was that smile, she made me feel so comfortable I forgot all my nerves.
‘We’ve still got that photograph on the mantlepiece on the sideboard at home of the beautiful smile.’
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