Queen Elizabeth II: A gap which will never be filled, says Scarborough MP

The death of Queen Elizabeth II has left "a gap which will never be filled", said Sir Robert Goodwill, the Tory MP for Scarborough and Whitby.

Following the Queen's death at 96, Sir Robert said he remembered her waving to him when he was five years old.

The Queen had attended the wedding of her cousin the Duke of Kent at York Minster, before being driven to the reception at Hovingham Hall.

As the car drove past "she waved straight at me", Sir Robert said.

Following the wedding of the duke and Katharine Worsley on 8 June 1961, Sir Robert said his father had plotted the route the Queen's car would take from York.

"We were the only car parked on the road. We sat on our Land Rover bonnet with our little Union flags and as she went past we waved our flags and she definitely looked at me and waved back," he said.

Sir Robert said he had later told the Queen about waving to her as a boy and to his amazement she had remembered it.

He said: "I met her at a reception at Buckingham Palace after I was elected to the European Parliament and I mentioned the occasion in 1961 and her face lit up, she could remember everything about it."

Sir Robert said the Queen then told him about a party on the royal train back to London.

"There was dancing and a woman wearing a stiletto heel stood on someone's foot and they had to stop the train at Doncaster and send them to the hospital because the stiletto had gone through their foot.

"So it must have been quite a party and she had obviously enjoyed every bit of it. But her memory of that was as clear as crystal and it was only about 12 years ago," he said.

"The Queen never put a foot wrong, I thought she would go on forever," he added.

Meanwhile Bill Chatt, the former mayor of the Borough of Scarborough, said he met Queen Elizabeth II when she reopened Scarborough Open Air Theatre in 2010.

"I'm a lad from a council house estate and was very grateful when I got made mayor of the borough and on my last day attended the Open Air Theatre on an absolutely spectacular summer day," he recalled.

Mr Chatt said about 6,500 people had lined the streets from the railway station to the theatre.

"I stood there with my wife and the car pulled up and I was expecting an 84-year-old lady to get out of the car, but the Queen was so sprightly she jumped out of that car like an 18-year-old, I was really amazed," he said.

The former mayor said he had sat next to the Queen during the show and afterwards on the walk back to the car the Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen stopped at the lake where swallows were diving for insects and they said "isn't this amazing, all this noise and nature continues?".

"Just before she got inside it she said, 'it's your last day isn't it Mr Mayor? Has it been a good day?'"

And I said: "When I was deputy mayor I managed to get somebody to fly a spitfire over the South Bay and I was challenged to try and beat that - and I'm pretty sure today I have."

Mr Chatt added: "She ended my mayoral year in such an appropriate way and I actually never forgot it and I was so grateful for her coming."

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