BY SHIRLEY MATHIAS: I was nine when I saw the Queen Mum. She, her husband King George VI, and princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were on the royal tour of South Africa in 1947.

My father, Arthur Honeychurch, was then a private in the Royal Army Service Corps and a patient at Baragwaneth Hospital in Johannesburg, which was then a military hospital. He had been there for a year when the royals came to visit.

The Queen Mother then, as always, was sympathetic towards anyone with a camera, whether amateur or professional.

My mum Kitty was definitely an amateur but the Queen Mum, then the Queen, knowing that patients' families were keen to get souvenirs of the visit and were brandishing their baby Brownies, slowed deliberately in front of the ranks of service wives.

In fact she bowled everybody off their feet the patients' partners, their kids and most of all the patients themselves. While the King, apparently never the most self confident of men chatted to the top brass, his queen, originator of the royal walkabout, was in there chatting to the patients, many of whom had active TB which was then regarded as highly infectious and the kiss of death.

They loved her. She had time for them, in spite of the top brass efforts to hurry her along.

Her friendly relationship with photographers never left her. Newsquest photographer, Colin Kearley, still talks with affection of the time when she put herself out to pose for news camera men in the rain at Spye Park, Corsham, where she stayed every year during Cheltenham Gold Cup race week with her friends Captain Frank and Lady Avice Spicer.

There has never been another royal like her and neither will there be. As a nine-year-old she made a hit with me and like millions I won't forget her.