Journalist tickled pink at memory of Queen Mum

Tony Blair tonight led the tributes to the Queen Mother, saying she had been a symbol of Britain’s ‘‘decency and courage’’.

The Prime Minister said that the entire nation would join with the Queen and the Royal Family in mourning her death.

‘‘During her long and extraordinary life, her grace, her sense of duty and her remarkable zest for life made her loved and admired by people of all ages and backgrounds, revered within our borders and beyond,’’ he said.

One of the most amusing accounts of the Queen Mother on tour was given by the distinguished journalist James Cameron.

Cameron covered for a national newspaper the royal tour of South Africa in 1947. Writing many years later, he said:

‘‘No two personalities could have been more different than those of the King and the Queen. She was, then as now, composed, eager, on top of every situation, he was tense, unbearably nervous, alternating diffidence with bursts of temper.’’

Illustrating how the Queen came to the rescue in awkward situations, Cameron told of a visit to a farm where ostriches were bred for their feathers.

Given a pair of clippers to pluck a feather from a tethered ostrich ‘‘the King fumbled the operation and his tweezers nicked a quarter inch off the ostrich’s backside, at which the unlucky bird made a fearsome screeching hullabaloo from which we all retreated in terror.

‘‘Enter the Queen, stage right, as usual in total smiling command. She took the clippers from her husband and there and then did an absolutely expert featherectomy snip. She spoke to the nearest bystander, who happened by chance to be me,’’ wrote Cameron.

‘‘We do a lot of gardening at home in the Palace,’’ said the Queen. ‘‘The King is good at the digging and the weeding. It is I who concentrates on the secateurs.’’

It was on that same tour that afterwards the Queen Mother said she made ‘‘the worst mistake in my life’’. She attacked a Zulu warrior with her parasol when he broke through a police cordon. The man was only trying to give the then Princess Elizabeth a 10 shilling note for her 21st birthday.

Later when touring Rhodesia, another incident tickled her keen sense of humour. Driving through huge crowds she spotted a black woman brandishing an outsize bunch of flowers and screaming her head off.

She insisted that the motorcade should stop so that she could receive the bouquet. The woman became very indignant, because she wanted to put the flowers on her husband’s grave the other side of the road.

Another of the Queen Mother’s favourite stories concerned the ‘‘loyal subject’’ running alongside her car as she drove through Cambridge. ‘‘What a very loyal subject,’’ she remarked and gave him a special wave.

But the man was clearly in some distress. She ordered the car to stop. The man, it appeared, had caught his jacket in the door.