Queen 'almost ludicrously busy' at 85, says Andrew Marr

THE BBC presenter Andrew Marr found the Queen "a good mimic... shrewdly observant, careful with money" and "very witty" while following her for nearly a year to make the three-part BBC1 documentary The Diamond Queen. The series starts next Monday, on the 60th anniversary of her coronation. 

Writing in the Radio Times, Marr says some of the most candid observations in the film come from her grandson, Prince Harry, who talked about her ability at the age of 85 to "turn up, still smiling, at places she might not want to be". He said: "These are the things that, at her age, she shouldn’t be doing, yet she’s carrying on and doing them."

Harry credited the 90-year-old Duke of Edinburgh with keeping his wife's spirits up, saying: "Regardless of whether my grandfather seems to be doing his own thing, sort of wandering off like a fish down the river, the fact that he’s there – personally, I don’t think that she could do it without him, especially when they’re both at this age."

As The Daily Telegraph reports, Tony Blair used his appearance in the film to scotch the story that it was his spin-doctors who wrote the Queen’s address after the death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales.

The speech, in which she addressed the nation "as your Queen and as a grandmother", was all hers, claims Blair. "Those words and that language were… absolutely not written by New Labour."

Marr says he found the Queen "almost ludicrously busy". The one day of the year she doesn't pile through huge amounts of official paperwork, delivered to her in ministerial red boxes, is Christmas Day.

Summing up the role she plays within her family, Marr says that she is "above all a wise woman, awe-inspiring, never to be taken for granted, but always there with help and advice".

The Queen will doubtless see Marr's piece, being a long-time subscriber to the Radio Times. Whether she will have the /time/ to read it is another matter. ·