Gloria Hunniford OBE reflects on meeting the Queen

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 recalled.

“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.”

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 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.”

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

“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.

“She was very chatty that day because I think there were only 50 people - sometimes it can be 200. 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.

“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!”