Queen Elizabeth II reportedly once had a run-in with a cleaning person that saw the monarch pushed to the back of an elevator.
The queen, who passed away in September 2022 at the age of 96, got the shove while dressed in full royal regalia — “crowns, gowns, everything” — according to Reverend Richard Coles, a British former pop star-turned-writer, radio host and priest.
Coles, 62, is currently competing on the UK reality TV series, “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” The show recently posted a clip of the former Communards artist telling his fellow contestants the hilarious tale about Queen Elizabeth.
“I heard a great story about the late queen,” Coles said in the video. “It was a State Opening of Parliament, so she got all robed up and everything to go into the chamber. But normally there’s a flight of stairs you have to go up to get there from the Robing Room, and she couldn’t manage that, so they thought they would put her in a lift.”
“So there she was with Prince Philip, and they were all absolutely done up — crowns, gowns, everything. And the Sergeant at Arms, whoever it was, took them into the lift, but he pressed the wrong button. Instead of going up to the Lords, it went down to [the] service sector,” Coles continued.
“And the door opened and there was a woman, a cleaner there, with a trolley. She didn’t look up, she just went, ‘Budge up!’ and walked in and pushed the queen and Prince Philip to the back of the lift! And then she looked up and went, ‘F – – king hell.’”
Coles and his fellow contestants burst out laughing. But the story wasn’t over.
“And the queen invited her to tea at Buckingham Palace,” Coles added.
Queen Elizabeth was known for having a “wicked” sense of humor.
In 2019, the late sovereign pranked a group of American tourists she met while hiking near her Scottish residence, Balmoral Castle.
The tourists did not recognize Her Majesty and asked if she had ever met the queen, as Richard Griffin, a former protection officer who was with the queen at the time, recalled in a 2022 interview.“As quick as a flash, she said, ‘Well I haven’t, but Dick here meets her regularly,’” Griffin remembered the queen saying.
“So the guy asked me what she was like.”
Griffin added, “And because I was with her a long time, I could pull her leg, so I said she could be very cantankerous at times, but she’s got a lovely sense of humor.”