Gloria Hunniford: My family thought I wasn’t going to let go of the Queen’s hand when I got my OBE

Veteran broadcaster Gloria Hunniford OBE chats to HELEN MCGURK about headscarves, Royal handshakes and taking part in the Platinum Jubilee celebrations
Gloria Hunniford will take part in the Platinum Jubilee festivities at Buckingham PalaceGloria Hunniford will take part in the Platinum Jubilee festivities at Buckingham Palace
Gloria Hunniford will take part in the Platinum Jubilee festivities at Buckingham Palace

When she was a girl growing up in Portadown, Gloria Hunniford recalls being desperate to watch the television coverage of the coronation, but there was only one problem - her family didn’t own a TV.

“I had to beg a lady on the Armagh Road called Mrs McCracken, as she was the only person I knew who had a television,” she recalls.

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“We used to go to the cinema, or the pictures, as we called it, every Saturday morning, and Pathe News would bring all the coverage of Princess Elizabeth coming home when her father died. We followed the news every week and then to see her being crowned Queen was amazing, particularly because I was so enamoured with this box of vision in the corner of Mrs McCracken’s room and we could watch it live. That was a thrill.”

The young Gloria’s fascination with the new Queen was then unexpectedly rewarded when, in a moment of pure serendipity in July 1953, she came face-to-face with Her Majesty.

“After the coronation, Northern Ireland was the first place she visited as Queen. I happened to be out on my bicycle as I was visiting some friends. I can’t remember the exact location, but it was on a country road and the police came along and took us off our bikes and put us near the hedge because some important car was coming through, and there was the newly crowned Queen and Prince Philip in this glass-topped car on its way to Hillsborough. I would have been about 12 at the time. I was so excited having just watched her transformation from Princess to Queen.”

Little did Gloria know then, that she would go on to have her own illustrious career, meet the Queen on several occasions and even be given a prestigious OBE.

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The Queen’s 70-year reign has been celebrated across the UK this week, with wall-to-wall television coverage of events across the region. Gloria joined the Jubilee programme on BBC1 from Northern Ireland for the lighting of the beacons and shared her memories of meeting Her Majesty.

Thankfully, it was in somewhat more clement conditions compared to the Silver Jubilee in 1977, as she explained.

“I was working for the BBC in Northern Ireland and I was asked to do the lighting of the beacon. We were somewhere on the side of a mountain and the weather was just unbelievably awful, it was windy and there was terrible rain.

“There was a school choir, the girls were singing in this fierce wind and weather and their white blouses were just clamped to their skin with rain.

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“I didn’t have a hat with me and my hair was blowing all over my face and in the end a producer suggested that I tie a headscarf around.

“I was so embarrassed because when it cut from me to live, the Queen was wearing her headscarf. I thought it was awful, because I was only in my 30s and I was wearing a headscarf. I have never worn a headscarf before or since.

“That was the first night I had to congratulate the Queen and I had to be taught how to say ‘ma’am’ correctly.”

Gloria moved to London in 1982 and over the years would go on to meet the Queen on several occasions.

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“I did nine Royal Variety Shows, either as a performer or introducing the show. The Queen didn’t do them all the time but out of those nine occasions, there were quite a few that she was there.”

However, the undisputed highlight for Gloria was meeting the Queen when she was given her OBE in 2017 for services to cancer charities.

“I was thrilled to bits that the Queen was there to present it because these days she doesn’t do as many as she used to.

“You are taught to walk forward three steps to the Queen, curtsy, she puts the medal on you and then she talks to you. She was very chatty that day because I think there were only 50 people - sometimes it can be 200.

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“But I have a habit of when anybody shakes my hand of putting my left hand over the clasped hands. My family were semi-laughing and semi-thinking would she ever let go of the Queen’s hand.

“The Queen was chatting away because part of my reason for getting the OBE was for services to cancer and she said ‘remind me why you are so dedicated?’, so I was telling her about Caron [Gloria’s late daughter who died in 2004 from breast cancer], so she was asking me all sorts of things about Caron.

“I learned afterwards from the papers, that technically speaking when she shakes hands with you that’s your sign to go, but not on that occasion! I am so proud of all the people that helped Caron’s charity because we do get a lot of help and I felt it (the OBE) was for them as well and I felt it was also for Caron.”

On Sunday, Gloria will be among 200 national treasures who will serenade the Queen by singing the national anthem at the grand finale of the Platinum Jubilee festivities at Buckingham Palace.

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The monarch is expected to appear on the balcony – the second of her planned appearances on the famous frontage over the weekend – to bring the national commemorations to a close.

Celebrities will travel in decorated open-top double-decker buses for the decade-by-decade celebrations. Gloria will join her good friend Sir Cliff Richard in the 1950s bus.

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