Lady Ella Mountbatten
(Picture: Lady Ella Mountbatten / Evening Standard)Ella Mountbatten, a cousin of the Queen, regularly saw the monarch up close, from the intimacy of Balmoral to the ceremony of Buckingham Palace. On one trip to Balmoral, Ella, 26, was “taken aback” when the Queen leant in to kiss her goodbye. Shocked by the informal farewell, she mirrored the Queen’s approach. “We ended up kissing on the lips, which was kind of awkward, and then Prince Philip started laughing!” She recalls a weekend when the Queen berated the Duke for slacking while they had guests. As Philip helped take a bag to the car, Ella overheard the Queen say: “Thanks so much for carrying that. It’s the first thing you’ve done all day to help.”
She also remembers waving from the palace balcony with the royal family as a child. “I remember when I was about 7 or 8 and we went on the balcony, and I kept doing this double handed wave standing next to the Queen as she stood there doing a slow one-handed wave; and then my sister wet her pants and had to take her tights off. The Queen just smiled at us and didn’t say anything.”
Another balcony memory sticks out. “One of the first times that I was on the balcony, I scooted my way to the centre. I managed to get right in between Charles and Camilla (this was when they first started to be seen in public together) and loads of the press couldn’t identify me because I was so far away from my dad.” Ella recalls the press furore. “All these newspapers called me a gate-crasher! Afterwards, the Queen apologised to my dad for it.”
Ella is the daughter of Lord Ivar Mountbatten, Queen Elizabeth II’s third cousin once removed.
Commons verus Commoners
Queue-gate rumbles on in Westminster. While mourners wait in a miles-long line to see the Queen lying in state, MPs and parliamentary employees got fast-track tickets to the catafalque upon which the Queen’s coffin rests. Irritation at the queue-jumping was compounded last night by the sight of MPs and staffers quaffing drinks on Parliament’s riverside terrace as thousands of citizens on the South Bank patiently filed past en route to Westminster Hall.
Lady Antonia’s touching tribute
Lady Antonia Fraser has paid tribute to the Queen with a poem from the perspective of a corgi. “I’ll miss the caress. I’ll miss the slap. Most of all, the royal shoes,” goes The Corgi’s Lament, published in The Oldie magazine. Lady Antonia, 90, is known for her biographies of Charles II and Mary, Queen of Scots. Could the poem be an epigraph to her next work? “She was our Queen,” the corgi reminisces. Not a bad book title.
Success for paw patrol
Call off the search! Angela Hartnett, chef at Mayfair’s Michelin-starred Murano restaurant, spent the week looking for her terrier, Betty. She enlisted the help of Nigella Lawson, Gary Lineker and the Londoner’s Diary in her efforts and now the pooch has been dropped at her east London doorstep — by a kind-hearted Londoner who saw Angela’s plea in these very pages. Another happily ever after.
Celebs get spooked
Last night TV presenter Laura Whitmore and Busted bassist Matt Willis showcased 2:22 A Ghost Story, a thriller in which they both star, now on at The Criterion. Denise van Outen and model Vogue Williams rocked up for a fright. Meanwhile, at the Toronto Film Festival, Prisoner’s Daughter co-stars Brian Cox and Kate Beckinsale frolicked on a sofa. Kate called Brian one of her “favourite people in the world”.
