CRAIG BROWN: Oi, Gandalf, why not attempt exhibiting somewhat gratitude?

Actors like to think of themselves as sensitive, but more often than not it’s just another word for touchy. 

Over the years, Queen Elizabeth showered Sir Ian McKellen with honours – a CBE in 1979, a Knighthood in 1991, a Companion of Honour in 2008 – but he remains steadfastly ungrateful.

‘The Queen, I’m sure she was quite mad at the end,’ he told a journalist from The Times last week.

‘And on the few occasions I met her she was quite rude. When I received a medal for acting, she said, ‘You’ve been doing this for an awfully long time.’ I said, ‘Well, not as long as you.’ 

I got a royal smile for that, but then she said, ‘Does anyone actually go to the theatre?’ That’s bloody rude when you’re giving someone a medal for acting. It meant, ‘Does anyone care a f*** about you because I don’t. Now off you go!’

Over the years, Queen Elizabeth showered Sir Ian McKellen (pictured) with honours – a CBE in 1979, a Knighthood in 1991, a Companion of Honour in 2008 – but he remains steadfastly ungrateful

This undated publicity film image released by Warner Bros., shows Ian McKellen as Gandalf in a scene from the fantasy adventure ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’

I think Sir Ian, as he likes to be called, may be over-reacting. When doling out honours, the Queen had so many hundreds of recipients to get through that she only had time to speak to each one for a few seconds.

She would usually ask something a little bland, like ‘What are you working on at the moment?’, and the recipient would reply with a few words, before shuffling away.

Perhaps she thought that Sir Ian McKellen, being such a regular, might prefer something a little more sparky and intimate. 

‘Does anyone actually go to the theatre?’ seems to me a perfectly reasonable question. It might have prompted the old thespian to give some sort of witty reply. 

Instead, he went all huffy on her, and 16 years later, is still snapping that she was ‘bloody rude’ and ‘quite mad’.

While I was researching my new book, A Voyage Around the Queen, I stumbled across any number of eminent men and women who accused the Queen of imaginary slights.

That chippy old bruiser John Prescott – now Lord Prescott, if you please – recalled first meeting Her Majesty in Hull. Like a number of anti-monarchists, he was determined to signal his opposition by refusing to bow.

‘I was surprised at how small the Queen was, and when it came to my turn, she mumbled something. I couldn’t hear what it was, so naturally I bent down. She just smiled. She knew she had got me. 

‘As far as everyone watching was concerned, and the local photographers, it looked as if I was bowing. But I wasn’t. She deliberately lowered her voice and caught me out.’

Oh, yes? It seems improbable that, facing shaking hands with a line of local bigwigs, the Queen would give a stuff as to which of them was for or against the monarchy. Throughout her life, she acted as a mirror. 

The light cast by fame bounced off her, and back on to those she met. Those by nature wary of the monarchy would convince themselves that she regarded them with equal suspicion.

Sir Ian with Queen Elizabeth II when he received his Companion of Honour for his services to drama and equality

In his autobiography, Andrew Neil recalls meeting the Queen in 1985. ‘She shook my hand, smiled weakly and quickly moved on. That was before we had written anything to offend the royals but maybe she sensed even then that I was trouble in the making.’ 

But how could she have done? Her powers did not include the ability to see into the future.

The crabby Nobel Prize-winning Australian novelist Patrick White was invited to a party on the Royal Yacht Britannia when it docked in Sydney in 1963. 

Like many vociferous anti-monarchists, he couldn’t resist the allure of rubbing shoulders with the Queen, and accepted.

The Queen exchanged a few polite words about a local shipwreck before moving on. But this was not good enough for White. ‘She struck me as being quite without charm,’ he recalled, going on to describe her as ‘hard as nails’ and even ‘abominable’.

Similarly, Sasha Swire, the pushy wife of a low-ranking Tory Northern Ireland minister, was upset after almost meeting the Queen in Belfast in 2010. 

‘She fixes her beady eyes on me briefly then swans past, not saying a word…’ Swire complained to her diary. ‘She is telling me I am just a plus-one, not a player or a heroine.’

The Bible offers a lesson for such people. ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!’