Short articles written by Mike Truscott, ghost-writer of autobiographies for everyday people and reproduced by kind permission of the Falmouth Packet weekly newspaper.

WHAT THE QUEEN THOUGHT OF OUR PASTIES

If you’ve ever wondered whether Her Majesty The Queen has sampled a Cornish pasty, and what she thought of it, the Packet archive has the answer.
In August, 1977, the Queen and Prince Philip visited Falmouth to begin their Silver Jubilee tour of Cornwall.  
The Mayor then, as now, was Geoffrey Evans, and as the royal party headed into town she said to him:  “I wonder what I am going to receive today.”  Mr Evans replied:  “You never know, it might be a Cornish pasty.”
He told me:  “As we left the Town Hall, a little girl ran up to her and gave her three pasties.  She looked to me as if to say ‘Is this planned?’ – it wasn’t – and we had a really good laugh together.
“I later asked if she had enjoyed the pasties.  She said she had cut them up and sampled each one of them – and found them very enjoyable!”
Tens of thousands of people had poured into Falmouth for the royal spectacle, which ended with fireworks and the departure of the Royal Yacht Britannia.  The cars were still crawling out of the town, nose to tail, after 1 am the next day.  
Packet reporters Brian Wall, Caroline Donovan (now Righton) and Yours Truly concluded that Falmouth had “never known a day like it.”
Penryn, too, shared the magic.  The Queen was not originally scheduled to stop there, but local pressure changed all that.
She was greeted by the Mayor, Mr J C Bedford Daniel.  Bedford was a lovely man – a very accessible local bank manager (who shared his desk with his cat), but also known for not exactly holding back when his beloved Penryn rugby team dared to under-perform!

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