Fact Check
As Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest on Sept. 19, 2022, in Windsor Castle in London, personal stories about her grew very popular on the internet. One memory shared earlier this year by her former Royal Protection Officer, Richard Griffin, went viral.
He claimed that the Queen once pranked a group of American tourists at Balmoral Castle, her estate house in Scotland. A clip of his interview on Sky News went viral:
The story began with the Queen's propensity to take picnics at the estate around lunchtime with just her protection officer in tow. Griffin said:
There were two hikers coming towards us, and the Queen would always stop and say hello. And it was two Americans on a walking holiday. And it was clear from the moment we first stopped that they hadn't recognized the Queen, which is fine. The American gentleman was telling the Queen where he came from [...]. And I could see it coming and sure enough he said to her Majesty: “And where do you live?”
She said, 'Well I live in London, but I've got a holiday home just the other side of the hills.” And he said, “How often have you been coming up here?”
She said, “I had been coming up ever since I was a little girl, so over 80 years.” And you could see the cogs ticking. He said: “Well if you've been coming up here for 80 years, you must have met the Queen?”
And as quick as a flash, she said “Well I haven't but Dick here meets her regularly.” So the guy said to me, “You’ve met the Queen, what’s she like?” And because I was with her a long time, and I knew I could pull her leg, I said, “Oh, she can be very cantankerous at times, but she's got a lovely sense of humor.”
The next thing I knew, this guy comes around, puts his arm around my shoulder, and before I could see what was happening, he gets his camera, gives it to the Queen, and says, “Could you take a picture of the two of us?” Anyway we swap places and I took a picture of them with the Queen, and we never let on, and we waved goodbye and Her Majesty said to me, “I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to their friends in America — and hopefully someone tells him who I am.”
Griffin was speaking to Sky News during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022, marking 70 years of her reign. The encounter presumably took place more than a decade ago, as the Queen pointed out that she had been coming to Balmoral for around 80 years.
Griffin, according to The Telegraph, was the Queen’s personal protection officer from 1999 until 2013. As he described in the above interview, he worked for the royal family for around three decades, in various capacities. After the state funeral, he was invited to attend a smaller committal service at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, along with staff and the family.
The queen possessed a dry wit and "sense of the ridiculous," royal historian Robert Lacey told the BBC on the occasion of her 96th birthday in April 2022. "Laughing things off has been an important survival technique."