Queen helped with sparkling
THE Queen helped to comfort people and ease their nerves as they took part in official ceremonies, the Commons heard.
Conservative former transport secretary Grant Shapps told the Commons how the Queen had saved him from feeling embarrassed during his Privy Council swearing in ceremony.
Sir John Redwood, a Conservative former minister in the Major government, meanwhile described the Queen as “understanding that everyone else... was terrified” at official events, and sought to ease them.
As MPS took part in a rare sitting to pay tribute to the Queen yesterday, Mr Shapps recalled the “ancient and complex” process of becoming a privy councillor at Buckingham Palace.
The Welwyn Hatfield MP said he did not understand the meaning of the phrase “brush her hand” as part of the ceremonial oath-taking.
“Brush her hand? Was that an instruction to brush her hand with my hand, or a sleeve, or a handkerchief?” he said, “and as I was about to ask, we were called into the actual performance of the great ceremony itself.”
Fifth in the line to become a privy councillor, Mr Shapps said he was unable to watch what other ministers were doing ahead of him, telling the Commons: “She stretched out her bare ungloved right hand and to my surprise moved it towards my face, it moved towards my lips. I pursed my lips. It stuck!”
With a smack of his lips, Mr Shapps added: “In what felt like an age, she was trying to pull it away and then suddenly... her hand pulled away.”
The former minister said he wanted the ground to “swallow me whole” but, performing an impression of the Queen, he added: “She looked me right in the eyes with those wonderful sparkling eyes, and as though to acknowledge what had happened and also to forgive me in one turn, she said ‘Yes.’ We never spoke of it again – God Save the King.”
In his tribute to the Queen, Sir John told the Commons: “She was not just a consummate professional at those public events, but there was a warm spirit, the personality, and above all that understanding that everyone else at that event was terrified that something was going to go wrong, or that they hadn’t understood the protocol or that there was some magic way of doing it – as my right honourable friend (Mr Shapps) was explaining – that they had to get right.”
He added: “But in the public events, the Queen always relaxed people and showed them there was no right way, because she was there for the