The Queen Mother’s favourite drink was a gin and Dubonnet but she wasn’t an alcoholic, just a ‘devoted drinker’: Former royal correspondent CHARLES RAE on the defiant Palace matriarch, 124 years on from her birth

One of my many duties as a royal correspondent during the lifetime of the Queen Mother was to make regular late-night phone calls to ask about her health. 

The reason was that on many occasions, usually around 10p.m. my news desk at The Sun would ring me because as they said: ‘We have had an anonymous call from a woman with a plummy voice to tell us that the Queen Mum is dead!’

Despite me telling them that it would be highly unlikely that any official announcement would come late at night, they insisted I ring.

The answer was always the same: ‘No, Her Majesty is well and fine and very much alive!

But I was not expecting a phone call from her office on one occasion, the day after I had made one of my ‘death knock’ calls.

The voice – ironically a woman with a plummy voice, but one I recognised as an aide to the Queen Mother – said: ‘Her Majesty wants you to know that she is feeling very well and has no plans to depart this world anytime soon. So, you can have a night off!’

The Queen Mother with William Tallon, her butler, in 1982. He garnered the nickname ‘Backstairs Billy’ 

During the Second War, Adolf Hitler said that the Queen Mother was the most dangerous woman in Europe. Above: The royal couple speak to war-weary Britons in 1945

When a bomb landed and exploded at Buckingham Palace, the Queen Mother declared: ‘Now I can look the East End in the eye’. Above: Queen Elizabeth and King George survey damage to Buckingham Palace with Prime Minister Winston Churchill after a bombing raid, September 1940

The King and Queen were seen  visiting patients in a bomb damaged hospital in 1940

The Queen Mother gazing at her ‘beloved Bertie’ whilst visiting The Lord Roberts Memorial Centre at Inverness in 1948

And at a press reception on one trip to Canada, the Queen Mother made the assembled reporters and photographers choke on their drinks when she said with a smile: ‘Ah gentlemen have you come over to gather more material for my obituary?’

During her lifetime, the she was as famous for her clever quips, pointed observations and dry-as-a-Martini delivery style as she was for being a member of the Royal Family.

She was also famed for her fondness for ‘drinky-poos’ – usually a gin and Dubonnet or three.

Her love of booze prompted one equerry to describe her not as an alcoholic, exactly, but as ‘a devoted drinker’. 

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was born into a Victorian world 124 years ago on August 4, 1900 – the same year the British got their first taste of Coca-Cola.

Queen Victoria was still – just about – on the throne, and so her life is a history of Britain throughout the 20th Century.

She married into the Royal Family and was happy to be a Duchess, but fortunes were to change thanks to her errant brother-in-law, King Edward VIII.

When he gave up the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth’s beloved Bertie nervously became King George VI.   

During the Second World War, Adolf Hitler described the Queen Mother as the most dangerous woman in Britain, because of the morale boost she gave to Brits by refusing to take her two daughters to Canada. 

And when a bomb landed and exploded at Buckingham Palace, she declared: ‘Now I can look the East End in the eye.’

Make no mistake, this was a woman who was the power behind the throne. 

She turned a stuttering George VI into a confident King who led his people through the trauma of a world war.

In other words, she was a tough cookie. High society photographer Cecil Beaton once described her as ‘a marshmallow made on a welding machine’.

Despite her stoicism in the face of adversity, the Queen Mother was also famous for her one-liners. 

It is said that her humour kept her going until her death at the age of 101 in March 2002.

Once, at a dinner in Hillsborough Castle, she responded to the loyal toast by inviting everyone to raise their glasses not only to ‘the people of Northern Ireland’, but to each of the six counties – one after another. 

By the end, guests were swaying on their feet, while one old general staggered off to throw up in the Entrance Hall’s umbrella stand. The Queen Mother remained clear-headed throughout.

The wreckage of Hallsville School (known as Agate Street Infants), East London, after it was hit during a German air raid, killing 75 people

Fifty years later, in 1990, the Queen Mother visited the same school in the East End 

The Queen Mother kept her commitment to the East End, visiting whenever she could. One of her most famous visits was to the Queen’s Head pub in Flamborough Street, Limehouse, in 1987. Aged 87 at the time, she stopped at the pub owned by Young and Co and pulled, then supped, a pint of their Special bitter

Alcohol figured prominently in her life, prompting one equerry to describe her not as an alcoholic, exactly, but as ‘a devoted drinker’. Above: The Queen Mother enjoys a drink as she takes part in the traditional ‘Wayfairers Dole’ at the Hospital of St Cross at Winchester, 1986 

The Queen Mother celebrating her 95th birthday with her butler William ‘Backstairs Billy’  Tallon, grandson Prince Charles and great-grandsons Prince Harry and Prince William the former Prince of Wales with Prince Harry and Prince William, 1995

After trying for some time to summon one of her staff because she wanted a drink, she went downstairs to find her footman, William ‘Backstairs Billy’ Tallon, rowing with his colleague and on-off boyfriend, Reg Wilcock. 

When she saw them, she brusquely asked, in entirely non-PC fashion: ‘Would one of you old queens mind getting this old queen a drink?’

One time she was explaining her liking for helicopters and she said: ‘The chopper has made more difference to my life than it has to any queen’s since dear old Anne Boleyn’s.’

She was great friends with the playwright and entertainer Noel Coward and had invited him over to Buckingham Palace for lunch. 

He accompanied her as she inspected the Guard.

The Queen Mother glanced across at Noel and caught his eye lingering upon an attractive young soldier. 

The Queen Mother leaned towards him and said: ‘I wouldn’t if I was you Noel… they count them before they go back in.’

Towards the end of her life, she had lunch with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, who according to the Queen Mother, was a very good pianist.

‘All afternoon we played the piano and we sang the old music hall songs,’ she said. 

When her equerry came to retrieve her late in the afternoon, he found the pair belting out Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s A Dustman. ‘I think my drink was spiked,’ she claimed later.