Dame Shirley Bassey once had an awkward encounter with Queen Elizabeth.
The 79-year-old singer has recalled a conversation she had with the 90-year-old monarch in which her attempts to make small talk with the royal went badly wrong and the ‘Big Spender’ hitmaker feared she’d be thrown in the Tower of London.
Speaking on upcoming BBC documentary, ‘David Walliams Celebrates Dame Shirley Bassey’, to commemorate her incredible career, she said: "As the queen left I said, ‘I think we are opening the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff together soon, Ma’am.’
"And Her Majesty turned back to me quickly and said, ‘Yes, I think we are,’ as in the royal ‘we’.
"I thought I’d go to the Tower."
Shirley is thought to have had the awkward exchange with the queen in Cardiff in 1999 to mark the opening of the Welsh Assembly.
It isn’t the only uncomfortable moment between a singer and a member of the Royal Family, though.
In 1997 at the Spice Girls’ ‘Spice World’ movie premiere Geri Horner patted Prince Charles on the derriere, but it was widely reported she had pinched his butt.
She recently said: "I didn’t pinch Prince Charles’s bum, as was reported. I patted it,’ she explained.
"Patting him on the bottom was against royal protocol but we’re all human. It was the premiere of our film, Spice World, in the late Nineties. There was a lot of nervous energy – young women, happy antics."
Shirley Bassey’s awkward Queen chat
