Queen’s death was confirmed, Elaine Paige felt crushed with grief, almost as if she was mourning a relative rather than the Monarch. “I know this may sound strange but I honestly felt as though I’d lost a member of my own family.

I’m such a staunch royalist,” she tells me.“Every time I’d met her, she was so real, so honest, someone who always looked you straight in the eye.

I tend to be rather an over-emotional person. I was heartbroken by her passing, and, for at least two weeks afterwards, I stayed at home, not going anywhere.

I wanted to be alone to grieve.”Having been asked rather hastily to turn her popular Radio Two Sunday show into an extended tribute to Her Majesty, she shared anecdotes, of which more shortly, from some of the many times the pair had met over the years.It was clearly a challenging experience.“I don’t mind admitting I struggled to hold it all together towards the end of the radio tribute,” she continues. “But I was determined to thank her for her 70 years of service and more without cracking up.”Little wonder the outspoken septuagenarian star of stage and screen needs no prompting to share her frank disbelief at what has happened since.“What does Prince Harry hope to achieve,” she asks, “by his endless swipes at the Royal Family?

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