[ad_1]
As some 22 royal family members looked on, the queen’s former royal bagpiper, Scott “Pipes” Methven, played his bagpipes outside the Balmoral cottage, doing his best to ignore the swarms of biting midges that had even William, Prince of Wales, swatting away in frustration. “I never flickered an inch,” Methven bragged to People.
Afterward, Queen Elizabeth invited her guests in for a drink, where her mischievous side was in full force. First, she gave the royal torch bearers “a thimbleful of alcohol” while Methven received a hefty serving of whisky. Then she asked her Pipes about his stoicism in the face of all the biting insects. “I have a secret weapon,” he joked. “I laced myself internally with gin.”
The queen reacted most unexpectedly. “[S]he punched me in the arm!” recalled Methven. “With 22 members of the royal family sitting there!” The guests were momentarily stunned, but Methven went along with the joke by pretending he had been badly hurt. “She just started laughing, and then everyone else did too,” Methven said. “There are not many people in the world who can say they were punched by the Queen!”
It was an unexpected bit of teasing from a revered monarch. But then, would you expect any less from the woman who had James Bond escort her to the 2012 London Olympics?
[ad_2]
Leave a Reply