TV Presenter and best-selling author Fern Britton is a self-confessed “royal geek” who wrote so regularly to the Royal Family that she was once on Prince Charles’ Christmas card list.
And the one person the This Morning legend wished she had interviewed was the Queen.
She also said she hoped that somewhere lurking in an archive is a collection of the Queen’s true views after she decided she was at an age where she could throw caution to the wind.
Fern said that like much of the nation, her reaction to the “devastating” news of the Queen’s death was silence. But she found it a comfort she died of old age and was not in pain.
Fern, 66, is expected to enter the Celebrity Big Brother house tomorrow.
But it won’t be the first time she has competed against fellow celebrities on TV. She appeared in series 10 of BBC’s Strictly, which launched in 2012, and was eliminated in week six.
She said: “I have always been a bit of a royal geek, even when I was a teenager.
“I used to write to Prince Charles. I was at drama school at the time doing a stage manager course and I got a diploma.
“I was like, ‘We are putting this great show on. Would you like to come to our first night?’ Within 48 hours I had a very nice letter back.
“I used to write to the Queen as well and you used to get a nice note. At one stage I was on Prince Charles’ Christmas card list. I used to get cards from him every year.”
Alongside her mother, and Diana Rigg in The Avengers, her other role model was the Queen. She “means more and more now she has gone” and she “had a glint in her eyes”, said Fern.
Regretting she never interviewed her, Fern added: “I really hope that somewhere along the line she did document something or did an interview that won’t appear for 50 years.
“We all get to an age where we think ‘Well, I would like to say what I want to say’. I hope maybe she did do that.” Fern recalled that in September 2022, as the Royal Family gathered at Balmoral, she had been filming when a researcher said the Queen was unwell.
Fern said: “I was not expecting her to leave us. We were devastated, just the silence that fell. That silence said an awful lot about how the whole country reacted.
“We have moved on, as it seems appropriate. She died of old age and was not in pain.”
Fern also recalled meeting the Queen at an event, and how This Morning co-host Phillip Schofield was a tad over-familiar with the monarch.
Recalling how she stood next to him in line as the Queen greeted the stars at ITV’s 50th anniversary gala in September 2005, she said: “Phil had met her the week before at an event in Henley. So he went ‘Hello’ and she just went ‘Hmm’.
“She then turned to Ant and Dec, and said, ‘Do you work behind the camera?’
“She was wonderful. You do feel as if she has looked at you and spotted you.”
Fern suffered heartache after splitting from celebrity chef Phil Vickery after 20 years of marriage in 2020.
She said: “When things are tough you have just got to put one foot in front of another. And you need to just find somebody and put your arms around them, and generally that fixes everything.”
But having confessed to the nation she has a crush on Pretty Woman star Richard Gere, she added: “I’d say, ‘Let’s do a movie, Richard.’”
● Her latest book, The Good Servant, is about the nanny who looked after Princess Elizabeth and Margaret
