A man has expressed concern that he may have peaked too early in his sadness for the passing of the Queen, it has emerged.
Mike McBride has already had to dip deep into his reserves of go-to phrases to express his grief over the Queen's death, noting solemnly at least 100 times over the last 4 days to anyone who will listen that her steadfast duty is an example to us all, that she represented everything that was good about our nation, and that her sense of humour was surprisingly dry for a monarch.
McBride has already spent days glued to the armchair in his living room flicking between Sky News, BBC and ITV looking to pick up previously unknown nuggets about the Queen's life that he can scatter into his conversation, but knows that the hard yards are still ahead of him.
'I need to remember its a marathon not a sprint', said McBride. 'Operation London Bridge is only a quarter of the way through, and I'm already dangerously low on Queen-related conversation fuel'
'I do have an anecdote from a friend - or maybe it was Giles Brandreth on one of his hundred or so vox-pops? - who said he saw The Queen eating a ham sandwich out of a tupperware box when she attended the St Leger horse race one year - she really did have the common touch', said McBride. 'I was hoping to save this for the day of the funeral to impress friends and family, but I may have to kick for the home straight much sooner.'
'There's just no way I can continue at this level for another week', admitted McBride. 'I'm so knackered, I tried to cut and paste that picture of the Her Majesty holding hands with Paddington onto my Facebook profile page but ended up posting a photo of the weeds in the vegetable patch in my garden that I'd just taken, along with the message 'Rest in Peace Ma'am'. Nightmare.'
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