The photographer who drank the Queen’s gin
Nationally respected photographer Rob Tucker remembers the day he downed the Queen’s glass of gin.
‘‘It’s hard to believe it’s true,’’ Tucker said from his home in New Plymouth.
One night he received a call at home that he initially thought was ‘‘someone having me on,’’ said Tucker, who lived in Auckland at the time.
He had been covering the 1990 Royal tour and the ‘‘posh voice’’ on the other end of the phone said she was from the Queen’s household and the Queen wanted him to do a job for her.
Tucker asked if he’d get paid and when he was told no he ‘‘knew the call was for real’’.
‘‘She said ‘the Queen will brief you herself’. I thought that’s interesting.
‘‘An invite arrived in the mail from a courier, gilt-edged card, saying I had an audience with the Queen in two days’ time at Government House in Auckland.’’
He arrived on time and was escorted into a lounge where a man dressed in a military uniform offered him a drink.
‘‘I was standing having a beer and in walks the Queen. It was unbelievable. It was so relaxed, just like having a conversation with anybody.
‘‘She was quite relaxed and so was I and the guy came over with a silver tray and a drink on it.’’
She wanted him to go to Waitangi and photograph her and the people she met in the meeting house, he said.
They chatted away for about 15 minutes, before the Queen went to get changed for dinner leaving Tucker with the ‘‘’glorified bar tender’’.
‘‘She put her drink down, half drunk. It was a crystal glass.
‘‘When this guy wasn’t looking I wondered what she was drinking, so I grabbed the glass and downed it, in one gulp. It near killed me.
‘‘I think it was straight gin, I don’t think there was much tonic in it. I thought, ‘Good on you girl’.’’
After Tucker took the photographs at Waitangi he handed over the unprocessed film and never found out what happened to them.
Looking back, it was an ‘‘amazing experience.’’
He isn’t the only Taranaki man with a tale to tell about the Queen.
Former Police Superintendent Bob Silk worked with the royal family during their visits to New Zealand over the years.
He has an amusing story about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1981 when they went to spend their day off on Motuarohia/ Roberton Island in the Bay of Islands.
The royal couple said they didn’t want any police officers on the island, Silk said.
‘‘But because the Governor General’s car had been attacked at Waitangi earlier in the year ‘it was out of the question that there should be no police presence’.
None of the property owners on the island were going to be home that weekend, so a plainclothes Armed Offenders Squad team and a dog handler were sent to stay overnight, hidden, at the caretaker’s barn, while observing the royal party. It sounded good in theory.
In reality they didn’t remain hidden.
As Silk tells it, the Queen and the Duke had a bit of a ‘‘tiff’’ and the Queen went for a walk unexpectedly arriving at the barn where the officers were hiding.
One backed away from her and fell off a cliff, luckily safely landing on ledge, she found another hiding in a cupboard and sat down on a bed and chatted to the third while petting his stinky dog.
The Queen thought the incidents were funny and Silk received a personally signed photograph of the Queen and the Duke in a leather frame along with an appreciation letter on HM Yacht Britannia letterhead.
He still has it.
But yesterday, Silk was thinking back on the first time he saw her.
‘‘It was 1953, and he was a young police officer in Auckland.
‘‘I was on night shift outside of Government House in 1953 on her first visit. And she came past in the car and looked straight at me and smiled. And I thought ‘ what a beautiful lady’.’’
Years later in 1974, at the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, Silk remembers her getting mobbed during the closing ceremony.
It was called the friendly games, he said.
And all the athletes were mingling and partying in the middle of the stadium when the Queen and the Duke got in their Land Rover.
‘‘It was a magnificent sight. Don’t think it’s ever happened again. It was tremendous – the sheer emotion from the athletes.
‘‘The crowd loved her.’’