Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, thousands made the journey to Westminster to pay homage to the longest-reigning monarch. With a gruelling queue stretching for miles with wait times of more than 10 hours, one lucky Rhondda man and his partner had a star-studded encounter.
Joining the crowds waiting to pay their respects, the one and only David Beckham was one of thousands of people in the queue along with some security in plainly-dressed clothes to follow him on the way. The football legend and husband to Posh Spice, Victoria Beckham, was spotted by author Christopher Anstee from Rhondda. In a brief moment, the pair quickly shook hands and Chris leaned in for a photo. Admitting to be star-struck by meeting Becks in the line, Chris told WalesOnline he stopped him to say hello after passing him at the zig zag ending of the monumental queue.
"There was moments when [we] were five hours in and there had been a standstill for an hour. It's like this huge human traffic jam and you're losing your mind. It was about seven people deep and you can't really see that far. So he was close, probably about 20 people back which means you wouldn't have seen him.
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"When we got to the last section, there was a zig zag. So in the last hour of those 11 hours a chap was walking towards me. I was walking in one direction and at exactly the same time, he was walking in the other and I honestly thought the chap looked really handsome. At first I thought it was a chap that looked like David Beckham, but as he got closer, it was just obvious.
"I let him pass one time and then our paths crossed again in the next lane down. I just said 'David do you mind if I say hello' and he stopped briefly. He joked about the fact that he's not allowed to stop because he didn't want to hold up the queue. My partner shook his hand. I asked him for a photo and he posed in quite a playful way, which was quite funny."
Whilst Chris said he was star-struck initially, the brief encounter was very quickly enjoyed before a sharp reminder of why he was there queuing quickly returned. Whilst David was offered to skip the queue, he chose not to.
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