Ridiculous Jobs Queen Elizabeth Actually Has Her Staff Do –  Hw

Queen Elizabeth II employs an astonishing 1,200 people just to keep the Royal Household running. The positions held by her staffers vary from cooks to chauffeurs, but as it turns out, quite a few people on the payroll are doing jobs that seem, well, delightfully bizarre. The Master of the Horse position goes way back to the year 1340, according to Horse & Hound.

While this position would have been of importance in centuries past, today the job is an honorary one. The outlet explained, “The Master is no longer involved with the day-to-day running of [the royal stables] but still makes inspections and rides in ceremonial uniform at state occasions.” “I think she also felt that there was a responsibility on her to maintain the bloodlines that had been established over many generations” In 1999, the queen appointed Lord Sam Vestey, former chairman of Cheltenham racecourse in

Gloucestershire, as the new Master of the Horse. He is the “senior officer” in charge of the royal stables as well as the horses and carriages belonging to the queen. The Telegraph reported, “In his role he attends important ceremonial occasions when the sovereign rides on horseback or travels in horse-drawn carriage, such as at Trooping the Colour and the state opening of Parliament.

” Stewart Parvin, who manages the queen’s wardrobe, revealed that there’s a staffer tasked with breaking-in the queen’s shoes. To do this, the employee dons a pair of socks and walks around the carpeted areas of Buckingham Palace. Parvin told the Evening Standard in 2017, “The shoes have to be immediately comfortable.

The Queen can never say ‘I’m uncomfortable, I can’t walk any more.'” “Angela Kelly is sort of the unsung heroine of British fashion.” In her book The Other Side of the Coin, dressmaker to the queen, Angela Kelly, spilled even more details about the strange practice, writing, “As has been reported a lot in the press, a [service person] wears in Her Majesty’s shoes to ensure that they are comfortable and that she is always good to go.

And yes, I am that [person]…We share the same shoe size, it makes the most sense this way.” Up until the mid-1800s, the head of the royal family traveled via the river Thames. Back then, 48 staffers dubbed Royal Watermen were responsible for rowing the Royal Barges in order to transport the sovereign. But during his reign, King Edward VII cut the number by half.

The royal family’s office states, “The Sovereign today still retains 24 Royal Watermen under the command of The Queen’s Bargemaster, thereby continuing one of the most ancient appointments in the Royal Household.” “It’s quite a big thing, very prestigious, and a lovely tradition as well” But while this ceremonial team remains on staff, there isn’t exactly a daily need for them.

In the rare instance when the royals travel the Thames, the Royal Watermen are tasked with accompanying the family. Of the more than one thousand people working for the monarch, one is the Astronomer Royal. This position first came to be in the 17th century, with the Royal Museums Greenwich explaining, ”

The first Astronomer Royal…was charged…with drawing up a map of the heavens with enough accuracy to be reliable for navigation.” Although the job led to a great number of scientific discoveries, the position is mostly ceremonial today. As of 2020, astrophysicist Martin Rees holds the honorary position and is thus a member of the Royal Household. “My professional interest has been in trying to understand cosmic phenomena and how our universe has evolved.

” But despite his credentials, working as the queen’s astronomer doesn’t exactly pay well. Rees receives a stipend of just about $129 per year. The queen has her very own composer, dubbed the Master of The Queen’s Music. In the past, this position was a lifelong commitment, but these days, the royal family officially states that the terms have been limited to ten years in order to allow more musicians to get involved.

BBC News explained, “[There are] no fixed duties involved…The Master may compose pieces for Royal or State occasions.” While this is largely a ceremonial job today, those who’ve been appointed are uniquely talented. In 2004, the queen chose renowned British conductor and composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who formerly headed both the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic.

A decade later, the queen appointed the first-ever female Master of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir, a former opera writer and resident composer with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Keeper of the Royal Philatelic Collection has to be one of the oddest titles to hold. Appointed by the queen, the Keeper is entrusted with maintaining her personal stamp collection.

Before being chosen for this position in 2003, Michael Sefi, was already working for the royals as Deputy Keeper. He explained his job, telling The Times, “The job as Keeper is part-time and the commitment is two days a week; my commitment to the British Philatelic Trust…is the same. If one wanted to spend three, four, five, six, or even seven days a week in the Stamp Room, one could, as there is always lots to do.

” And it’s a big job because the queen’s got a ton of stamps. “Stamps act as a global advert of what’s important to the people of that nation. And in this country, all the biggest royal events are commemorated.” Sefi revealed to the outlet, “The red albums of King George V amount to around 17,500 album pages.

The blue albums of King George VI will also contain many thousands of album sheets…For a serious, dedicated philatelist it is a tremendous privilege.” Since 1843 the Royal Household has employed the Piper of the Sovereign. According to Hello! Magazine, this musician plays the bagpipes at the queen’s pleasure.

The piper is also tasked with playing the bagpipes every weekday for 15 minutes beginning at 9 a.m., as a wakeup call for the queen. The Express reported, “The sound of the lone piper has played under the Queen’s bedroom window every weekday since she took up her position on the throne.” Although an alarm clock would arguably work just fine, the queen continues to employ a Piper of the Sovereign.

As of 2020, Pipe Major David Rodgers holds the title, and it’s a daunting one. Former Piper Gordon Webster said he had to memorize hundreds of songs during his tenure, claiming, “The queen didn’t like to a certain extent that you repeated tunes every day. I probably had about seven, 800 tunes under my belt, and they’re all up here.

” If you spot a swan in England, there’s a good chance it belongs to the queen. Since the 12th century, according to the family’s official site, the Crown has maintained: “[The] right to claim ownership of any unmarked mute swan swimming in open waters.” “All swans in the United Kingdom can belong to the queen, but she mainly exercises this right on the river Thames.

” In the past, swans were considered a delicacy and were served at royal banquets. But today, the royal family no longer eats the birds. Instead, the queen helps protect them. While the queen could claim any unmarked swans throughout the country, she focuses on one stretch of the Thames, by way of her swan task force.

“My name’s David Barber and I look after the swans wherever the queen exercises her royal prerogative right.” The Swan Marker leads his crew of Swan Uppers each year on a quote, “iconic five-day journey upriver.” Upon spotting the birds, as the procedure goes… “[They] carefully position their boats around the swans, lift them [or ‘up’ them] from the water and check their health.

” The practice of hiring a food taster to test for poison is an ancient one. Roman Emperor Claudius famously had a taster who was later suspected of murder when Claudius died by poisoning. Although it has not been confirmed by the Secret Service, it’s likely that American presidents still abide by the practice.

And the same appears to be true for the queen. Although Buckingham Palace has not confirmed reports of an official food taster, chef Kevin Dundon claims to have observed the custom firsthand. The chef once prepared a salmon and lamb dinner for the queen, but said she didn’t try the meal until after her taste-tester sampled it.

Dundon told People magazine, “I produced two plates: one for him and one for her, and he tasted before it was served to her.” One does not simply earn the title of Grand Carver of England. Rather, one is born into it. Even if you’re the go-to person at Thanksgiving, there’s no hope of becoming the queen’s carver unless you’re of noble blood.

The Financial Times reported, “In the past, skilled carvers would serve the monarch slices of meat that were a uniform shape and thickness, and which were still hot.” Today, the Earl of Denbigh holds the sole position as Grand Carver of England and is responsible for, you guessed it, carving meat for the royal family.

Although this may sound like a strange job, it wouldn’t have been in years past. Chef and accomplished carver Mark Hix told the outlet that the practice has become a lost art. Just as the title of Grand Carver of England is passed down through generations, Hix misses a time when the skill was quote, “proudly passed from father to son.

” The royal family has been making an effort to keep up with the times. The queen even posted on Instagram for the very first time in March 2019. But they still uphold centuries-old traditions. Nevermind cell phones, the queen has roughly 450 analog clocks ticking at Windsor Castle alone. The Express reported that her longtime clockmaker, Steve Davidson, even developed Repetitive Strain Injury in his wrist after nearly two decades spent cleaning, repairing, and winding the queen’s clocks.

Pages of Honour have perhaps one of the simplest jobs in the Royal Household. Which is appropriate, since they’re kids. According to the Daily Mail, Pages are tasked with carrying the queen’s train during royal ceremonies, and… “Hold office for two to three years between the ages of twelve and fifteen.” But not just anyone gets the job, they are the sons of the royal family’s friends.

And their duties are tougher than they seem. One of the queen’s Page boys even fainted while she was giving a speech back in 2014. “My government will introduce a bill to bolster investment in infrastructure and will form planning law to improve economic competitiveness” A source told the outlet, “The poor boy had been standing up for some time in uncomfortable and claustrophobic clothing…The important thing to remember is that he was just doing his duty for the Queen.

” The queen has essentially amassed a museum’s worth of art. And according to the Royal Collection Trust, it is possibly one of the largest collections anywhere in the world, with around 7,000 oil paintings and 3,000 miniatures. In 2004, the queen appointed Desmond Shawe-Taylor as Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures.

He told the Trust, “It is a huge honour to be chosen…as Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures. The Royal Collection has a great tradition of scholarship and outstanding exhibitions, and it will be an immense privilege to be part of it.” You know you’ve really made it once you’ve added an on-call sculptor to your payroll! In 2008, the queen bestowed artist Alexander Stoddart with a mouthful of a title: Her Majesty’s Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland.

“I’m not the queen’s sculpture in ordinary because the sculpture is the guy that sets about all day in the studio doing nothing like this.” According to BBC News, Stoddart is considered the leading monumental sculptor throughout Scotland. Still, he was surprised by his appointment. He told the outlet, “I am perfectly thunderstruck to receive it.

I should hope to be able to match the expectations implicit in this appointment in continued association with these wonderful people, to Her Majesty’s satisfaction.” Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more List videos about your favorite celebs are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don’t miss a single one.

QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.

Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.

Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.

The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.

Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.

Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.

Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.

that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music

industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.

The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.

Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.

Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.

The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.

Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.

Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.

Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.

Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.

The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.

Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.

The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.

Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.

Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.

The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.

Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.

The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.

Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.

They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.

She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.

She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.

She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.

She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it

well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.

Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.

What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.

The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.

They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.

Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.

Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and

Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the right sentence said at the right moment can completely change the entire direction of a relationship. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary human beings behind music’s greatest legends.