Queen: Public 'have right to know' about health says expert

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Darren McGrady, a former Palace kitchen chef, has shared the method Her Majesty The Queen follows to stay elegant when eating bananas.

The Queen, 95, peels the thick, yellow fruit with a knife and fork, said Mr McGrady, who worked at Buckingham Palace for more than 10 years.

She would cut the top and bottom off, slice the skin away length-ways and chop it up into small pieces that would then be ready for her to eat elegantly.

The Queen employed the technique so to avoid looking like a “gobbling monkey”, explained the royal chef, who also worked for the late Princess Diana, for whom he had reportedly cooked dinner the night of her death in 1997.

But the peculiar way to peel bananas is just one of Her Majesty’s food quirks.

In Thomas Blaike’s book What a thing to say to The Queen, the author revealed something the monarch’s late husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh once said about his wife.

“If it was customary to have porridge at every meal,” Philip said, “Lilibet would have it.”

It isn’t only porridge, though, that she loves for breakfast (and other meals) – but also cereal.

In the book, Mr Blaike recalled an instance when Nancy Reagan, former US first lady, was invited to breakfast at Windsor and, on the way to the terrace where the Queen was expecting her, “boxes of cereal stumped her completely”.

Ms Reagan asked Prince Charles, “What do I do?”, to which the Queen’s eldest son answered: “Just help yourself.”

Among the monarch’s food preferences are also a few no-goes, such as shellfish, for its likelihood to cause food poisoning, or garlic, possibly for the smell.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, confirmed this during an appearance at MasterChef Australia. “I hate to say this, but garlic… Garlic is a no-no.”

If there is something the Queen would never turn away from, that is tea.

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Mr McGrady explained: “She’d always have afternoon tea wherever she was in the world.”

During the chef’s tenure, from 1982 to 1993, he joined her on two royal tours of Australia.

Speaking about one of those trips, he said: “It was five o’clock in the morning but for the Queen it was five in the afternoon so my first job was making scones.”

There is, however, one “guilty pleasure” Her Majesty is known to have given up recently – her daily martini.

Though she is rarely ever seen drinking alcohol in public, the Queen reportedly used to enjoy a cocktail most evenings.

A family friend told Vanity Fair: “The Queen has been told to give up her evening drink which is usually a dry martini.

“It’s not really a big deal for her, she is not a big drinker but it seems a trifle unfair that at this stage in her life she’s having to give up one of very few pleasures.”

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