HOW the Queen takes her Martini and her love of afternoon tea are revealed in a new BBC1 documentary on the monarch’s culinary tastes.
The TV chef Gary Rhodes, who worked as a footman at Buckingham Palace functions as a teenager, lifts the lid on life both above and below stairs in the programme All the Queen’s Cooks.
Rhodes, who worked at the palace while he was a catering stud
ent, says some Buckingham Palace corridors were fitted with traffic lights. He told the Radio Times magazine that the lights would turn red when the Queen was in the vicinity, adding: "I think they were to ensure no-one bumped into the Royal Family."
But a Palace spokeswoman said yesterday: "There have never been any lights for that purpose."
The programme reveals that there is a dislike of waste at Buckingham Palace - the Sunday roast is recycled into cottage pies or rissoles.
The Queen apparently favours plain food, such as lamb cutlets or roast beef, with bread-and-butter pudding or ice-cream to follow. All the Queen’s Cooks claims that the Queen dislikes spicy food and tomato pips, which are said to get stuck in her teeth.
Taking afternoon tea - which consists of scones, potted shrimps, thin cucumber sandwiches without the crusts and a special royal blend of tea - is one of the Queen’s favourite pastimes.
The programme says the Queen takes tea strong with a few drops of milk, and, as an aperitif, she likes a dry martini, stirred not shaken, and finished with a twist of lemon.
Another TV chef, Antony Worrall Thompson, tells the programme how it all went wrong when he prepared lunch for the Queen and 1,500 guests at the opening of Eurotunnel. The 7,000 dandelion leaves ordered for a salad were not cut properly when they were delivered, and had to be done by hand.
And on the way to the function, the chef was caught speeding by police - having overslept with a hangover. He says the court let him off with a couple of points on his licence because he argued he was forced to choose between the law on the one hand and his Queen and country on the other.
Possibly more embarrassing revelations about the private habits of senior members of the Royal Family came to light last year, when a reporter for a tabloid newspaper gained employment at Buckingham Palace as a footman.
He found that the Queen's footmen were given a detailed plan of her breakfast table, setting out the exact positions of every utensil, condiment and cereal.
The Duke of Edinburgh insisted on what he called a "calling tray" at 7:30am, with the pot of tea and china cup and saucer arranged according to order. On one weekend during the reporter’s Royal employment, he was one of ten staff waiting on the Queen as she drank a cup of coffee.
All the Queen’s Cooks will be shown on Tuesday, 10 August, at 10:35pm.
