I can't do without my Queen Mum

By The Bug's royal reporter Don Gordon-Brown

Some 17-odd people throughout the British Commonwealth turned 100 on Saturday.
Unfortunately, one of them was the Queen Mother.
Now before our British readers rush off and send an indignant, puffed-up e-mail blessed with a hyphenated surname and (retired) in brackets, The Bug says "unfortunately" only in the sense that Australians are not used to the way things are done in the land of being pompous under almost any circumstances.
And while we weren't in the Old Dart back in June for the Lord Mayor's lunch which launched the centennary celebrations for arguably the least unloved Royal, we've seen enough of it unfold to be fed up to the back teeth with the gushing adulation that's been afforded the first royal to make three figures in the land that invented the game.
That's our back teeth, mind, not the Queen Mum's stained and crooked set of tombstones that somehow miraculously metamorphotoshop into a near-perfect set of whites for the big full-colour portraits that the media barons just love to publish to boost circulation.
You' ve got to admit that the way the media carries on, the Queen Mum makes Mother Teresa look like the Saturday night special in the cheapest whorehouse in Calcutta.
Now, sure, it's a mighty effort on anyone's part, really, to have lived that long.
But when every fart you' ve ever emitted has been tested by a team of expert surgeons with gas spectrometers and you've have more check-ups than the English cricket side has had batting collapses, then perhaps three figures is more or less expected of one. Especially, too, after a life of the finest foods other people's money can buy.
And, true, she was whisked out of the royal bunker to inspect the V-bomb damage and have her photo taken long after the all-clear sirens had died down in World War 11, and that endeared her to the millions who had to sweat it out on top when things got really Nazi.
And she has kept her nose relatively clean and her gin up as her extended family carried on like regulars on The Box, a quality Australian television lifestyle program of some decades past.
So I guess what we're really trying to say is that even we at The Bug bought our minature union jacks and rejoiced with the pommy nation as the Queen Mother, looking resplendant if slightly wobbly in something pale blue and expensive, went down to the front gate of her beloved Cost-Overrun House to accept the Queen's Birthday greeting, signed simply Lilibet by her daughter, the Queen Proper.
Soon after that, it was into the horse-pulled Martin Landau for a leisurely drive down The Mall accompanied by her favourite oldest grandson, the Queen Eccentric. Crowds up to one deep in places cheered her on - the biggest turnout since the Queen Daughter-in-Loon cemented her place forever in the hearts of ordinary Britons and a cement pylon of a Paris road tunnel.
Then she took centre stage on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, flanked by her other daughter, the Queen Inebriate, the Queen Husband, the Queen Eccentric and his siblings, Queen Randy, the Queen Mare and Queen Queen, whose trophy wife, the Queen Sophie's choice was to stand on the other side of the Queen Mother, as if to give her space to reflect whether she'll miss all the attention after the inevitable divorce and banishment.
Close by were the heir and spare, Queen Loon-Lookalike and Queen Hurry-or-someone-might-see-us, looking more and more like his conception was an achievement of Major proportions.
Others, too, like the Queen and Queeness Michael of Wimbledon were there to pay homage to the family matriarch. Some 70 plus in all, so you could almost hear the balcony and public purse groan under the weight.
No, it all went down a treat, and The Bug hopes the Queen Mum lives on and on - for five years at least.
We all desperately need the break.