"He never forgot where he came from".
Commentators are liable to repeat this old cliché too quickly and unthinkingly. But it could hardly have been less accurate in summing-up Bill Tallon, Steward and Page of the Backstairs at Clarence House.
The popular actress June Brown puts the opposite case, noting that palace servants become "almost part of royalty". Many of us would have put it rather less graciously, ridiculing the bullfrog vanity of these jumped-up waiters and window-cleaners with their petty privileges and opportunities for favouritism and victimisation - especially sensitive in an unmistakeably gay culture.
It was this culture, however, that seemed to appeal to the sillier side of the Queen Mother, surrounding her with non-threatening males in her widowhood. Perhaps too, a lifetime of sharp salutes and worshipping crowds had given her a psychological need for comic relief. It almost echoed Queen Victoria's passion for the crude, drunken servant John Brown.
But just as the Queen Mother herself was not all sugar and spice, so 'Backstairs Billy' could not be described as a man without enemies. Many humiliated persons were awaiting their chance to hit back, while the press kept its own vigil too. One incident made him look bad (though it was not especially his fault) and that was the last, shocking image of the once-glamorous Princess Margaret, being wheeled towards the cameras by Tallon. More serious was his entertaining of a criminal rent-boy at his grace-and-favour house in the palace grounds. But not even the Queen Mum could last forever, and when she eventually passed away at a hundred-and-one, the odd couple were a couple no more, and the show was over. He would have to live alone, away from royal circles, for the first time since he was fifteen.
But perhaps nothing was stupider than the lament that he had been shut out in the cold after "giving his life to the Royal family", as though he was a name on a war memorial. It was the Royal family that had given Tallon fifty years of pampered privilege, with all the luxury and good living a man could ask for, and if he was grumbling about having to queue up at the supermarket in his old age, then he had indeed forgotten where he came from.
Commentators are liable to repeat this old cliché too quickly and unthinkingly. But it could hardly have been less accurate in summing-up Bill Tallon, Steward and Page of the Backstairs at Clarence House.
The popular actress June Brown puts the opposite case, noting that palace servants become "almost part of royalty". Many of us would have put it rather less graciously, ridiculing the bullfrog vanity of these jumped-up waiters and window-cleaners with their petty privileges and opportunities for favouritism and victimisation - especially sensitive in an unmistakeably gay culture.
It was this culture, however, that seemed to appeal to the sillier side of the Queen Mother, surrounding her with non-threatening males in her widowhood. Perhaps too, a lifetime of sharp salutes and worshipping crowds had given her a psychological need for comic relief. It almost echoed Queen Victoria's passion for the crude, drunken servant John Brown.
But just as the Queen Mother herself was not all sugar and spice, so 'Backstairs Billy' could not be described as a man without enemies. Many humiliated persons were awaiting their chance to hit back, while the press kept its own vigil too. One incident made him look bad (though it was not especially his fault) and that was the last, shocking image of the once-glamorous Princess Margaret, being wheeled towards the cameras by Tallon. More serious was his entertaining of a criminal rent-boy at his grace-and-favour house in the palace grounds. But not even the Queen Mum could last forever, and when she eventually passed away at a hundred-and-one, the odd couple were a couple no more, and the show was over. He would have to live alone, away from royal circles, for the first time since he was fifteen.
But perhaps nothing was stupider than the lament that he had been shut out in the cold after "giving his life to the Royal family", as though he was a name on a war memorial. It was the Royal family that had given Tallon fifty years of pampered privilege, with all the luxury and good living a man could ask for, and if he was grumbling about having to queue up at the supermarket in his old age, then he had indeed forgotten where he came from.
