ALL ready with your red white and blue bunting? Made your celebration cakes and puddings like you saw on the telly? Here are a few scurrilous things I think you might like to know as you drink a toast to her majesty’s 70 years ruling over us.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born on April 21 1926 in Bruton Street in Mayfair, London. This was not a royal palace or a big estate or even a hospital, but a rather posh townhouse on an expensive London street.

Her parents, the Duke and Duchess of York, who claimed to be a bit hard up for members of the royal family, had moved into the house belonging to her Scottish grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, only a few weeks before Elizabeth was born.

If she had been born less than 10 years before her surname would not have been Windsor but the rather Germanic Saxe-Coburg Gotha. It was only at the end of World War I, the result of which you may remember — Britain won, Germany lost — that the British royal family changed its name to the wholesome and very English sounding Windsor.

That name change didn’t stop Elizabeth spending her early years in what was a very Germanic family. Virtually all the family, including the young princess, were bilingual – German and English. Indeed, up the road at Buckingham Palace German was used more often than English. Some older female royals at the palace didn’t speak anything but German.

By the time Elizabeth was 10 her father’s elder brother had become King Edward VIII. It is now well known that he was a nazi and a supporter and friend of Adolf Hitler.

After his abdication Edward VIII saw himself living in France and waiting to become Britain’s first nazi monarch. He believed this would happen when Hitler and the German forces that he so admired had invaded and conquered the British Isles.

A photograph exists of uncle David – King Edward VIII – teaching his niece the Princess and future Queen Elizabeth the Nazi salute. No wonder the royals have tried to destroy every copy of this photograph. Fortunately I have a very poor copy of the picture in my archive.

Elizabeth was not born to be queen. As the daughter of the king’s younger son she was not expected to take the throne. It was only when king Edward VIII – the man she called her uncle David — was forced to abdicate that her father became a very reluctant and stuttering king and his daughter Elizabeth moved to the top of the list of those who would one day rule Britain.

Elizabeth’s father King George VI was a heavy smoker and his lungs finally gave in in his sleep on February 6 1952. He was aged just 56.

Overnight and unexpectedly Elizabeth found herself not just Queen of the United Kingdom but also head of state of 14 other Commonwealth countries. She was just 27 years old.

Today she is the richest woman in Britain and almost certainly one of the richest women in the world with a personal fortune estimated at £423 million. She has accumulated this fortune while sitting on the throne. Perhaps she had a second well paid job on the side.

Despite this vast fortune, she still has most of her huge living expenses, accommodation, travel and vast array of equerries, advisers, servants and other staff paid by you and me, the British taxpayer.

To Elizabeth’s own spending we must add the cost of family members and other hangers on. Altogether the total cost is at least £345 million a year. This year of course that figure may nearly double when we add on the extra spending on the Queen’s 70th anniversary.

Royal accounts are always made deliberately difficult to understand and that huge spending doesn’t include revenue from the two duchies – Cornwall and Lancaster – nor are security costs, usually met by local councils and police forces, included.

Add to that the lost tax revenue for taxes she and the family don’t pay. None of these are included in the figures released to the public. Transparency? You must be joking.

Now let’s take a look at some of the rest of her family, surely one of the most dysfunctional families in the land.

I haven’t room to list them all. Daughter Anne is not just divorced but also with a criminal record.

Her oldest son Charles is hopping from foot to foot just waiting for his mum to shuffle off her mortal coil. He can’t wait to take the throne and inspire and instruct us all with his amazing expertise in so many subjects.

He considers himself one of the leading environmentalists on the planet, but that doesn’t stop him shooting wildlife and hunting on horseback.

Charles once said that if the Labour Party ever banned hunting he would leave the country. Many of us thought that might be the best argument to ban hunting.

He is – according to himself – one of the world’s greatest health experts. He is a great enthusiast for all kinds of unscientific alternative health cures including the totally irrational homeopathy. His support has cost the National Health Service millions of pounds over the years. 

When it comes to architecture Charles also claims to be one of the world’s leading experts on architectural and planning taste. He has already built his own village on his royal estate as well as several more in other countries. 

Visit the rather twee Poundbury on the edge of Dorchester to see what Charles sees as the future of Britain’s buildings.

Monarchs aren’t supposed to take an active part in politics but we can be sure, based on past experience, that Charles will be a very hands-on monarch with opinions and demands on all kinds of political issues.

He’ll bring with him his Camilla, the woman with whom he has had an extramarital relationship since he and she were just 17. I can’t wait until he starts to advise us all on ethics and morality as head of the Church of England and now apparently many other faiths.

His younger brother Andrew, Duke of York surely needs little introduction. This pal of paedophiles is still it seems Queen Elizabeth’s favourite child.

Just this last week it has been revealed that Randy Andy had had a long-term sexual relationship with Jeffery Epstein’s head pimp Ghislaine Maxwell. He has always maintained that he and Maxwell were “just good friends.”

It seems Andrew may have got his taste for sex with very young women from his father Philip or from that very good friend of the royals Jimmy Savile.

Savile actually produced a booklet for the royals and their public relations teams on how to hide unsavoury stories from the public. Seems it was worth an OBE and a knighthood for their Jim.

The Queen’s uncle Lord Mountbatten was another with paedophile and other dubious sexual tastes. Throughout Mountbatten’s life and in the years after he died rumours swirled about his many extramarital affairs.

An FBI dossier on Mountbatten, released in 2019 thanks to a Freedom of Information request, reveals shocking information about the royal who was a mentor to his grand-nephew Prince Charles.

The FBI files describe Louis Mountbatten, the 1st Earl of Burma, and his wife Edwina as “persons of extremely low morals” and contain information suggesting that Lord Mountbatten was a paedophile with “a perversion for young boys.”

Nice lot this royal family.

With their focus on lines of inheritance and distant family trees it is strange that they seem to resist any public DNA tests that would clear up some of these dubious issues.

Just one of the thousands of scandals that have been swept under those regal carpets concerns Prince Harry. Is he really the son of Prince Charles?

Some say he is not the son of Charles but of cavalry officer James Hewitt who had a long-term extramarital affair with Princess Diana when he was teaching her to ride.

Photographs of Prince Harry and James Hewitt are most convincing on the parental links and those links are very important if you are in line to take the throne.    

The Queen had always been disappointed that Charles’s Diana had no interest in horses so arranged for Hewitt to teach her horsemanship. Bad call your majesty.

After their affair was corroborated and made public by Princess Diana herself in 1995, rumours about Hewitt being the real father of Prince Harry started.

Those two pictures, often published together seem to prove the case perfectly but a DNA comparison would clear the matter up so we know it will never happen

What a bunch, what a bundle of disreputable disgusting people. If you would like to meet any of them just slip their partners a hundred grand or so and it can usually be arranged.

Yet we continue to pay to keep Queen Elizabeth and this dysfunctional crew in their golden palaces. This weekend we are all asked to get out the bunting and champagne and join the anniversary celebrations.
 
Sorry folks, my celebrations are going to wait until we get a republic here in Britain and finally cast Elizabeth and her entire dysfunctional gang into the dustbin of history. I can’t wait, can you?