Dirty Den and a right royal ding-dong . . .
10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT QUEEN VICTORIA
1. The forthcoming film Victoria And Abdul is all about Queen Victoria’s unlikely friendship with her Indian servant Abdul Karim. Judi Dench originally played the part of Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, which chronicled Victoria’s unlikely friendship with her Scottish servant John Brown.
2. PLANS are already underway to film Victoria And Cliff, about Queen Victoria’s unlikely friendship with veteran pop star Sir Cliff Richard. The highlight of the film comes on the Queen’s 70th birthday, when the young Cliff leaps out of a large cake, dressed in a tight flared two-piece suit and performs a rendition of his classic chart-topper, Congratulations.
3. Queen Victoria can also be seen every Sunday in the second series of Victoria on ITV. Some viewers have expressed themselves ‘ horrified’ by what they claim are historical inaccuracies.
‘The scene in which the young Victoria is kissed full on the lips by the brooding, muscular lord Melbourne as he emerges soaking wet from a lake has absolutely NO basis in historical fact,’ argued aggrieved viewer Ivor Batey. however, supporters of the series argued that Mr Batey had been mistakenly viewing a repeat of Pride And Prejudice on another channel.
4. HER first name was not Victoria. As a baby, she was originally christened Dollis hill, but her parents renamed her Victoria when the london Tube station close to Buckingham Palace grew more fashionable.
5. THOUGH her personality was imposing she was physically short, measuring barely 3ft tall. But she did her best to conceal it. Only after her death in 1900 was a pair of finely-crafted wooden stilts uncovered beneath her favourite dress.
6. VICTORIA had a famously sweet tooth, and was addicted to the chocolate- coated peanut bar Snickers, which in those far- off days was still known by its original name, Marathon. In many official portraits, a tell-tale trail of chocolate can be seen on her collar and upper blouse, along with a glimpse of wrapper clenched in her fist.
‘We much enjoy our mid-morning Marathon,’ she once told her ladyin-waiting, Baroness Maida Vale.
7. HER sense of humour has been under-rated by successive generations of biographers. Yet, in her day, she was known as one of the most consistently amusing members of the Royal family. She was often observed placing her monogrammed Whoopee Cushion on a chair before Mr gladstone came to call. She is also believed to be the first person to don a specs-nose-and-whiskers novelty mask.
Incidentally, Queen Victoria’s very own mask has been worn by former Victoria and Albert Museum director Sir Roy Strong for the past half-century.
8. HER beloved husband, Prince Albert, was a dedicated scientist, and is now best remembered as the inventor of the Slinky, a pre-compressed helical spring designed for moving itself by transferring energy along its length in a longitudinal wave.
Albert imagined that, in time, the Slinky would become a major form of international transport. he predicted that, with fine tuning, a larger version would be able to carry men, women and children in relative comfort across europe. Though this dream has yet to materialise, the Slinky remains one of the best- selling self-propelling stair-based gadgets of all time.
9. IT IS said that the ghost of Queen Victoria is infuriated by the use of her name on the public house in the BBC’s long-running soap opera eastenders. ‘The habits and manners of those who imbibe in the disreputable building that bears my name are quite appalling,’ she spelt out in a heated Ouija-board discussion with top TV medium Derren holmes.
In turn, it is claimed the ghost of Queen Victoria has been responsible for the high death toll within the pub, or immediately outside it. Victims of her wrath include Dirty Den, Archie Mitchell, Tiffany Mitchell, Tom Clements, Bradley Branning and Sylvie Carter.
In the wake of these tragedies, the series producers are considering changing the name of the pub to something more appropriate, such as The Duchess Of York.
10. PRONE to problems with her weight in her later years, Queen Victoria took up the fashionable 7:7 diet, which involved eating five three- course meals every day of the week. After five years on this regime she became so frustrated with the poor results that she changed tack, adding an extra cream cake on Sundays and Bank holidays.