Tom Fletcher revealed that his McFly pal Danny Jones broke royal protocol when he met the Queen.
The singer and Strictly star was even forced to step in and tell his McFly mates to “shut up” repeatedly, when their meeting with Her Majesty took a tense turn.
Tom and his bandmates Harry Judd, Dougie Poynter and Danny got to meet the monarch when they played at the Royal Variety Performance in November 2005.
However their royal visit didn’t go to plan, and Danny later admitted they ended up looking like “naughty schoolboys” at the regal event.
Speaking in their book Unsaid Things, Danny revealed that he was so nervous that he downed some booze to cope with the pressure.
(Image: WireImage)
Dougie explained that when you meet the Queen, a palace professional comes round to tell you all the rules and etiquette you have to follow.
He said: “You’re only allowed to speak when you’re spoken to, and you must call her ‘Ma’am’.
When it was time to meet the Queen, Tom said, McFly and all the other acts such as Ozzy Osbourne filed onto the stage in a horseshoe formation.
Tom said: “We were at one end. The Queen started at the other, pressing the flesh with artists whose careers she had no doubt been following carefully, like Ozzy Osbourne and Slash.
(Image: Getty Images for Commonwealth Games Federation / Birmingham 2022)
“I was stood next to Cliff [Richard] with Harry, Dougie and Danny next to me.”
Harry told the next part of the story, which is when the band risked getting themselves into trouble with the royals.
Harry wrote: “As the Queen was working her way down the line, one of us suggested that when our turn came we should give her a fist pump and say, ‘Yo, Queen!’. That set us off.
“We started giggling. And the closer she came, the worse our giggling grew. By the time she was a few handshakes away, we were almost in tears.”
(Image: WireImage)
Harry added that Tom had been trying to calm them all down, saying: “Dudes, it’s the Queen… Guys, really, shut up…”
However, the more Tom’s desperate attempts to stop them simply made them laugh more, and Danny branded it the “worst laugh attack we’d ever had”.
Harry remembered that when the Queen finally reached them in the line, he tried not to crumble and avoided eye contact with her, whilst Dougie tried to suppress a “snort of laughter”.
Soon enough, it was Danny’s turn to meet her, but Tom noticed that Danny had forgotten one of the royal rules they’d been told.
(Image: WireImage)
He said: “She moved on to Danny. He’d obviously forgotten that you aren’t supposed to speak until spoken to, because he immediately started jabbering away at her.”
Danny insisted that he didn’t have a choice, because otherwise he would have focused more on Harry and Dougie laughing.
The star asked Her Majesty: “Enjoy the show, then?” to which she responded: “Oh yes, very good.”
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images for Hug)
Danny replied that it “was a nice theatre, innit?”, and she agreed “Yes, yes, beautiful place” before moving on.
He said: “Happily I didn’t end up in the Tower for breaking the rules.”
Jones finished by saying that although the band never met Her Majesty again, they did perform for her at an Olympics event where he managed to mess up his words.
He joked that it was most likely karma for being “such naughty schoolboys” at the Royal Variety.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
