At one stage of her visit she challenged the inmates of our fast expanding sporting stars demythologising unit to a general knowledge contest. “Well, strike a light,” exclaimed her ladyship, sending the assembled crowd into paroxysms of laughter.She undoubtedly has a unique gift for communicating with both high and low. As you all know, the venerable lady has been one of our most stalwart supporters through good times and bad and it was only fitting that she should choose to spend her birthday with us, her adopted family.
A huge cake, made by a celebrity chef staying with us for a touch of remedial treatment after over-exposing himself on TV, was set out on the front patio. The lady herself, as graceful and charming as ever, her sure step belying her advanced years, looked radiant in swirling veils of purple and pink (her racing colours).

I think it will see an end to the BBC too, which may not be undeserved.. irst of all, a loud round of applause for all those who made the week’s visit by the Queen M such a resounding success. The occasion certainly ranks as the main highlight of my tenure as head of clerical services in the country’s leading rehabilitation centre

The day was glorious. It is an era which will see not a supplement to the licence fee but an end to the fee itself.

But I do not see any convincing reason why I should have to.Mr Davies says the extra money will by hypothecated – devoted to the development of the BBC’s digital services That makes his proposal even more scandalous. Instead of making some half-way decent programmes for its ordinary viewers and recovering some of the lost sport (the loss of Mr Desmond Lynam I can bear with equanimity), the corporation will merely waste the money, as it has already wasted billions on Sir John Birt’s bureaucracy and on his pet 24-hour news service, which nobody watches and is not much good anyway.Mr Davies’s analogies – of the corporation’s failing to start colour television or even a television service at all – are inexact His proposals will, I agree, inaugurate a new era. This is in addition to the BBC licence fee of pounds 101 and the digital fee already being paid, which can be as much as pounds 384 a year Like Mr Pooter, I am not a wealthy man I shall still be able to afford the extra pounds 24. The corporation could also commission some new plays or put on some new productions of old plays. Why is it, I have often wondered, that the BBC gets hold of an 18th- or 19th-century novel which, as all novels must, depends on the imagination; dirties it up a bit; goes to immense trouble to get the clothes exactly right; and then gets the extra words slightly wrong? And all the time, lying around, there are marvellous plays, from Congreve to Rattigan (or, if you prefer, Osborne), which are of the right length, give explicit instructions and require no additional lines of any kind.Mr Gavyn Davies and his committee are proposing to exact pounds 24 a year from possessors of digital television equipment.

He’s got a PhD in Scheduling.”Clearly the BBC could have done with someone like that on Tuesday, even if he or she only possessed a solitary O-level in the subject. It is almost as if scheduling is an academic discipline in which degrees can be awarded, even doctorates gained “Don’t mess with Brian, that’s my advice. Rating, we are told, has a diamond- sharp brain but lacks imagination, while Tube lacks imagination too but is renowned as a scheduler. In one of those BBC power struggles which the broadsheet papers feature from time to time, most recently over the Director-Generalship itself, rivals for some tedious position or other – let us call them Keith Rating and Brian Tube – have their strengths and weaknesses set out in little boxes under their pictures. Kindly note the reference to digital or other non-terrestrial systems To most people, it is a distinction without a difference. They acquire a non-terrestrial system, whether digital or of a less advanced variety, simply because it provides what they cannot otherwise get.And is it any wonder that they do this? At eight o’clock last Tuesday BBC1 was showing Vets in Practice (“Sam Robinson has her hands full with Floyd, a 13-stone Great Dane”), while at precisely the same time BBC2 was showing Back to the Floor Again (“Top Dog RSPCA DG Peter Davies returns to the shop floor”).