Bodyguard Recalls How Queen Elizabeth Once Pranked Hikers Who Didn’t Recognise Her | ‘A Lovely Sense of Humor'

Queen Elizabeth was known for her grace, poise, and dignity, but there were also moments when she let loose and just had fun. 

The Queen, who died on September 8, 2022, at the age of 96, had an impeccable sense of humor, and BuzzFeed News journalist David Mack is choosing to remember that in the wake of her death. 

Once news of her death had been made public, Mack took to Twitter to share a video of the queen’s former royal protection officer, Richard Griffin, telling a very funny story about the monarch in honor of her Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. “This remains an all-time story about the queen,” he captioned the video. according to HuffPost. 

In the video, Griffin shared a story about a time the queen pranked two hikers from the US. He recalled the time he once accompanied the monarch on a picnic in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, near Balmoral Castle. At the time they ran into tourists, who were vacationing in the area.

“The Queen would always stop and say hello … it was clear from the moment we first stopped they hadn’t recognized [her],” he told Sky News. The tourists soon struck up a conversation with her. One of them explained in detail to the Queen their plans in the country, and they soon asked her if she lived in the area. 

“She said, ‘Well, I live in London, but I’ve got a holiday home just the other side of the hills.’” One tourist then asked the queen how long she had been coming to her home in the hills, and the queen replied, “ever since I was a little girl, so over 80 years” Griffin recalled.

This piqued their interest in the conversation and one of them asked her, “‘Well, if you’ve been coming up for 80 years, you must have met the queen?’” Without missing a beat, the queen replied, “Well, I haven’t, but Dickie here meets her regularly,’” referring to Griffin by a nickname.

Upon hearing that, the tourists immediately turned to Griffin to ask him what the Queen was like. Since he'd spent several years with her, he knew he would make a joke at her expense and not be worried about the consequences, so he said, “She can be very cantankerous at times, but she’s got a lovely sense of humor.”

Since Griffin suddenly became aware of the celebrity, one of the tourists put his arm around the bodyguard, before proceeding to hand his camera over to none other than the Queen to take a photo of them! The Queen obliged, and the two of them also posed for a picture with her, without realizing who she was. 

Griffin then recalled, how once the tourists were out of earshot, the queen turned to him and said: “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to friends in America. Hopefully, someone tells him who I am.”

This story surely does bring a smile to your face, doesn't it? 

References:

https://twitter.com/davidmackau/status/1567894552744271872

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bodyguard-queen-elizabeth-story_n_631a4ebbe4b027aa405998b7

https://news.sky.com/video/platinum-jubilee-richard-griffin-on-the-queens-sense-of-humour-12626988

Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Stefan Wermuth - WPA Pool