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May God bless Her Majesty for eternity.
Last year the queen was enthroned for the 23rd time in Madame Tussauds’ waxworks. Her latest royal likeness took 800 hours to create. Invites for her Platinum Jubilee went out this year in May.
July, her decree to save Buckingham Palace’s grass sidelined Elton John from his normal arrival. He finally showed up via golf cart. And wore more diamonds than she.
Her favorite sip, Dubonnet. Favorite dessert, mint chocolate ice cream. Favored grandchild, Prince Edward’s little girl. Known trait? Thrifty. No unnecessary lights remained on in Buckingham.
An eternity ago — in a civilization long gone — comedian Bob Hope told a young reporter — me — about the fun of being with Her Majesty. “Fun?” I said. “What can you possibly mean ‘fun?’ ”
He said, “I’ve been with Queen Elizabeth many times. The queen would walk through Buckingham’s stiff official halls with me. Pointing to severe-looking, stern, unsmiling portraits lining the walls. The royal ancestors. She’d poke a little fun at them. Once, when I was there with my wife, she put on a thick Dutch accent. She was great fun,” he said.
Great fun? The queen? I reported this in a magazine. I doubt Her Majesty had a subscription, but Bob Hope never complained or requested a correction.
I was presented to her twice. In one garden party a starched equerry in a formal cutaway gray suit stood alongside. The signal was that omnipresent black pocketbook hanging from her wrist. A tiresome guest taking up too much time, the handbag shifted to the other wrist. That was the ramrod-straight equerry’s signal to move her along.
The second time was with my friend — BBC’s public relations executive Freddie Hancock — being honored in a Buckingham Palace ballroom. We guests shook her hand. She wore her usual gloves.
Me-Me-Markle, the divorced show business duchess daughter-in-law, and her high-IQ husband Prince Empty, have done Book 2 zapping the royals. Publication is momentary. Congratulations on their timing.
Irish author/actor Malachy McCourt, 90, zipping around in his motorized wheelchair: “I’ve done it. Outlived the queen!”
While we’re on royalty, Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, daughter of the 11th Duke of Marlborough, lives in a 1705 palace named Blenheim. England’s largest. Notably Sir Winston Churchill’s birthplace. She penned “Blenheim and the Churchill Family: A Personal Portrait” about her homestead. Shopping for a studio in Astoria she’s not.
Her ladyship’s into interior design. Also into collecting a few quid. So, Oct. 26 she’ll speak at Alabama’s Huntsville Museum of Art. Cocktails, 5:30. Talk, 6:30. Dinner, 7:30. Fund-raising constant.
While we’re on fund-raising. Goldie Hawn’s kid Kate Hudson is pushing Halloween costume jewelry for online’s BaubleBar. Things we all need. Like skeleton earrings for $52 and enamel witch studs for $48. Add that to her long-running Fabletics campaign. Also she’s complaining Taylor Swift won’t return calls or texts.
May not be true, but I hear that when Biden was born his pa gave out cigar butts.
Muttered only in New York, kids, only in New York.
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