The Queen …my memory

Photo: Anne Simpson, Women’s Editor, and my boss, is the first in the line up of editorial executives to meet the Queen in 1983 when she visited the Glasgow Herald as part of its 200th anniversary.
 
The Editor, Arnold Kemp, was showing the Queen around the open plan editorial floor (see extra – courtesy of my former colleague David Belcher on the Sports Desk) when they pass the Women’s Features Desk.
 
Here Molly Kelly, a larger than life extrovert figure and legendary journalist from the old Daily Express days and myself sit.
Molly happened to be a committed Royalist. She had decorated our desk with Union Jack flags and bunting making it a very colourful and startling statement amongst an acre of sombre dressed male journalists.
(See extra for photo of Molly and myself flanked by two glamorous Evening Times reporters.)
 
Well as the entourage pass our desk the Editor stops.
”This is the Women’s Desk”, he said.
 The Queen takes one look at us and walks on. 
Molly, who had so looked foreward to this moment, is mortified.
 I whisper to her “ we have been snubbed by the Queen.”
 
Later I learn we had been given The Look. You don’t get matey with the Queen.
 
PS. The Glasgow Herald, or Herald as it is now known as, is the oldest English language daily in the world.