Just when you thought you couldn’t love Her Majesty more, word comes that she is “thrilled” to have a fake waving machine to use in case her royal arm is too tired to greet the plebeians of England.
Of course, this is not a device created by the monarchy to ease the physical stress of ruling a country. It’s a gag gift from a group of students in Australia.
The Queen’s daughter, Princess Anne, is quoted in a new book, Queen of the World, explaining:
They gave her a stuffed glove on a wooden lever so you could tweak the end of the lever and this hand went to and fro,’ the quote reads. ‘I think they thought it was cheeky, but Her Majesty was thrilled.
Robert Hardman, the author of the book, which accompanies the HBO documentary of the same name, says the Queen was rather taken with it and “I think it ended up at Balmoral. ‘I don’t think she ever used it in public, but I hear it became a much-loved family joke.”
But while the Queen may store her fake wave machine in her closet somewhere, away from the corgis, the crew aboard the royal yacht Britannia actually did use a stunt hand (or several). According to Hardman’s book, they would hire people to do the waving because, according to one crew member, “It was exhausting to wave all the way through, but they didn’t want to upset the locals, so we had a party whose job was just to wave.”
How do we get that job?
