Theresa May paid an emotional but witty tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II in the Commons on Friday.
The former prime minister, now a backbench MP, revealed two particular anecdotes which reveal that the Queen was “down to earth” and a woman “of common sense”.
Recalling a particular picnic at the royal estate of Balmoral in Scotland, May explained: “I picked up some cheese, put it on a plate and was transferring it to a table.
“The cheese fell on the floor. I had a split-second decision to make.”
The Commons erupted into laughter while May paused for effect.
The Tory MP for Maidenhead continued: “I picked up the cheese, put it on the plate and put it on the table.
“I turned round to see that my every move had been watched very carefully by Her Majesty the Queen.
“I look at her, she looked at me, and she just smiled. And the cheese remained.”
May also recalled how the monarch even managed to infiltrate the consciousness of her husband, Philip May.
“My husband tells of the time he had a dream,” she began. “He dreamt that he was sitting in the back of a Range Rover being driven around a Balmoral estate and the driver was Her Majesty the Queen, and the passenger seat was occupied by his wife, the prime minister.
“And then he woke up and realised it was reality.”
This, too, brought laughter to the otherwise sombre atmosphere within the Commons.
Away from the anecdotes, May said that the late Queen was the “most remarkable person I have ever met”, and a “constant throughout our lives”.
She reminded the House how the Queen gave us “hope” throughout the Covid pandemic, and that her “selfless devotion to duty was an inspiration and example to us all”.
Recalling her weekly audiences with the Queen during her three-year premiership, she explained: “These were not meeting with a high and mighty monarch, but a conversation with a woman of experience and knowledge, and immense wisdom.
“They were also the one meeting I went to which I knew would not be briefed out.”
The monarch’s meeting with the prime minister are famously private. It is against protocol for either party to disclose what they discussed at a later date to anyone else.
May did reveal that the Queen’s personal extensive work made those audiences “special”, particularly combined with her “years of experience”.
The former prime minister also piled praise on the late monarch’s connection with the public: “She was Queen, but she embodied us.
“Across the nations of the world and for so many people, meeting Queen Elizabeth simply made their day, and for many was the memory of their life.”
Her speech was widely recognised on Twitter for hitting just the correct tone, too.
May also honoured the Queen the morning after her death by making a rare media appearance.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, she said: “She [the Queen] was a very acute judge of people and was able often to give those little, if you like, pen portraits of people that she knew, that she’d met.
“Sometimes it was a case of not just the individual but actually a sort of history of that individual, of her experiences of particular countries and particular issues.”