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My undercover attempt to hold court with the Duke

By Simon Carr

29 April 2002 - There was an embarrassing leak last week; word got out that the Queen had asked me down to Windsor for a tête-à-tête. The person responsible has been disciplined.

In the event, 700 others turned up. Some were grandees from the big circulation Sundays, others had come from Basildon. We all shared equally our subject status.

I wanted to talk to the Duke of Edinburgh. Yes, I wanted to reassure him that his recent remarks about Aborigines spearing each other – far from being a reactionary gaffe – were in the forefront of indigenous peoples' rights theory. If an indigenous Australian is arrested, he or she may choose not to go through the normal court process, but instead be tried by their tribal elders. If found guilty of a serious offence they may be speared, painfully, in the leg.

Alas, I didn't manage to get the story out. He saw that I was trying to conceal my name tag, and when I told him I was there undercover he barked: "Well I'm not talking to you then!" and beetled off. You can't fault him.

The Queen was delightful. She has the nicest smile. And she is the cause of the nicest smiles in others. When people speak to her, their faces relax into a goofily benign expression, half parental (she is ours, after all) and half childish (she's been there heading the state for ever).

It's clear the Queen is infinitely preferable as a head of state to any of our washed-up, clapped out parliamentarians. Her smile – so different in kind from the smile of our Prime Minister – didn't try to persuade you of anything, or attract your vote. Her very irrelevance to the vast part of the nation's activities is absolutely the reason why she should remain its head.

Media clipping from The Independent

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