I'm afraid I'll be killed says Boris

[Paul Rigby]

"That a leader of the opposition could be shot beside the walls of Buckingham Palace is beyond imagination."

A scary place, Buck House, as we are reminded this morning, courtesy of this puff piece from The Male on Sunday, reviewing the must-have tome de jour, Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, The Queen Mother's Most Devoted Servant by Tom Quinn is published by Robson Press, priced £20. Tallon's coiffure, a frankly terrifying cross between a Bernard Delfont and a Liberace of the middle period, is the single-most sinister thing I have seen this year.

Readers of a sensitive - or merely traditional - disposition should look away, and get someone else to read it aloud to them. It really is that funny:

Outrageous secrets of Backstairs Billy: Gay sex on the Queen Mother's favourite sofa. Predatory advances on junior butlers. Casual pick-ups left to roam Clarence House: The explosive true story of a favoured retainer
Flamboyant royal courtier William Tallon was known as Backstairs Billy
He spent 50 years as the friend and dance partner of the Queen Mother
Biography claims 'ruthless predator' held gay orgies at Clarence House
One maid said he let young men roam through the corridors at night

By TOM QUIMM FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 22:01, 14 March 2015 | UPDATED: 06:29, 15 March 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...chief.html

He was known as Backstairs Billy, the flamboyant Royal courtier who rose from humble beginnings to spend half a century as the friend, confidant and unofficial master of ceremonies for the Queen Mother.

William Tallon was famously Her Majesty's dance partner, the constant provider of her favourite gin and Dubonnet, stage manager of her sometimes ribald lunch parties and a bawdy, irreverent and deeply camp antidote to the strait-laced life of the rest of the Royal Family.
It was well known that Tallon was gay. But, in an echo of Queen Victoria's relationship with John Brown, the Queen Mother refused to hear the concerns of senior Palace staff who believed his imperious behaviour was a threat to harmony below stairs, and that his promiscuity provided a glaring security loophole at the heart of the Royal Family.

In truth, Billy was driven by two demons: an intense, almost pathological love for the Queen Mother, and a powerful sex drive.

Now, for the first time, a new biography tells the remarkable story of a ruthless predator whose outrageous lifestyle included gay orgies at Clarence House, rampant affairs below stairs, sex on the Queen Mother's favourite sofa and young men wandering the corridors at night...
For Rita Edwards, it was one of the most shocking and alarming things she saw in all her years as a maid at Clarence House. Late one night, as she crept along the historic corridors of the Queen Mother's official residence, she was horrified to bump into a well-dressed young man casually inspecting one of the paintings.

'I'd never seen him before,' she recalled. 'For there to be a stranger alone in the house at night was a serious security breach. Then I saw Billy suddenly at the far end of the corridor. His hair was all over the place and he was trying to put his jacket on I'd never seen him so flustered. He quickly reached the young man and was clearly furious. Next time we met he made absolutely no reference to this night-time escapade. But then he always would simply float above any difficulty or embarrassment.'

In truth, such a flagrant compromise of security was far from an exception. Billy Tallon's homosexuality was hardly a secret. But the extent to which he used Clarence House for sexual assignations with strangers and used it as a lure for prospective partners in the gay bars of Soho has never fully been grasped. Only now, after countless interviews with former staff and friends, can his extraordinarily risky indiscretions be revealed.

In the bars of Old Compton Street, Billy was famous for his solitary chat-up line. He would explain that he worked in a personal capacity for the Queen Mother and, when met with a sceptical smile, would say: 'Why don't you come back to the house for tea and you can see?'

Few could resist that kind of invitation. One former partner, who uses the name Brian Wilson, recalled Billy giving a very rough-looking young man, clearly a drug addict, a tour of Clarence House, including a number of the private rooms.

Billy seems to have been careful to invite young men back one at a time to Clarence House when the Queen Mother was there, but when she was away he frequently threw caution to the wind and invited two or even three at a time. As one of his contemporaries put it: 'I think he rather had a taste for orgies.'

During one group sex session, Brian Wilson, whom Billy had invited back from Soho, remembers Billy suggesting he sit on the Queen Mother's favourite sofa and there Billy had sex with him. Brian was convinced that was part of the sexual thrill for Billy.

After a night of entertaining dubious young men, Billy would stride along the corridors the next morning 'like the most buttoned-up confidential character you could imagine', Brian added.

Hiding his hangover, he would check the appearance of each room with an obsessive attention to detail. Occasionally he would return from a nocturnal foray looking bruised and battered after a rough encounter with someone who did not appreciate his advances, but he would carry on the next day as if nothing had happened.

Once he was stabbed in the leg by a furious young man he had propositioned, and a drunk Billy had to make his excuses and stay in bed.
But if the Queen Mother suspected anything she did not say, and Billy was sent a get-well card. After another encounter, Billy had to pretend the large plaster on his cheek was the result of a shaving accident. The Queen Mother said: 'I do hope you have not fallen out with one of your young friends!'

Another former friend, Noel Kelly, said: 'I'm sure Billy didn't really think the policeman at the gates believed him when he claimed that a very dodgy looking character shiftily hanging back behind him was an old friend he was simply bringing in for tea. So long as Billy had the confidence of the Queen Mother, they couldn't challenge anyone he chose to take on a tour of the house.'

William Tallon was a working-class boy born above a hardware shop in a rundown colliery town in County Durham during the Great Depression. Nominally, he was a servant, but in reality he was the Queen Mother's closest aide: a uniquely trusted friend and confidant; a man she could never quite do without.

Backstairs Billy, as he came to be nicknamed, was that rarest of creatures, a very ordinary person who, over more than five decades, carved out an extraordinary role in one of the world's most secretive institutions: the Royal Family. Relying entirely on force of character, he was like a private in the army who becomes a field marshal: the last person one would have expected to reach such a position of influence in a world where education and social class meant everything.

Until her death in 2002, there was only one figure who rivalled the Queen for the world's interest and the nation's affection, and that was her mother, Elizabeth. The Queen Mother seemed to float cynics would say on a tide of gin above criticism. But unlike her daughter, the Queen Mother was occasionally indiscreet and frequently off-message. She sometimes found the constraints of life in the Royal Family tedious. The great thing about the her, Backstairs Billy once said, was that she liked to have fun and didn't care who knew it.

Her affection for Billy was genuine, and also her way of teasing well-born advisers, who could not fathom why she seemed so fond of a 'rather common' man. She liked Billy because he was amusing, devoted and discreet when it mattered.

Billy's reputation for loyalty was partly based on his personality, but also because he was gay. The assumption was that he would have none of the distractions of someone heterosexual, who might eventually want his own family. He also had an enthusiasm for service that was becoming rare. The Queen Mother knew Billy was gay and didn't mind in the least there had been a long tradition of homosexual Royal servants.

Some commentators have said this was partly because the Royals felt that their female children would be safer if the male servants were homosexual, but it almost certainly had far more to do with the fact that homosexual servants were perceived rightly or wrongly as having less need for a life outside the Palace. And even though homosexuality was illegal until the mid-1960s, the Royals took a lordly view.

Perhaps the best example of the Queen Mother's tolerance occurred when the News of the World reported that a 'rent boy' had been invited back to Clarence House by Billy. She simply responded: 'How kind of William to invite that poor boy in out of the rain.'

But Billy's roving eye was not confined to pliant young men from the bars of Soho. From the day he arrived for his first job at Buckingham Palace in 1951 he knew using what today would be called his 'gaydar' that this was an environment in which he could enjoy himself: that below stairs, the Palace was filled with young gay men. Billy was a dangerous risk-taker; though considerate and amusing, he could also be ruthless and predatory. Almost from the time he moved to Clarence House, Billy spent his free time actively pursuing male servants and bringing back casual pick-ups.

'Billy was two completely different people,' said one contemporary, whom Billy seduced a few hours after he started work at Clarence House. 'He was calm and almost rigidly decorous during the day, but at night he had only one aim: to have sex with as many men as possible. The truth is that Billy's only real interest outside his work was sex.'

'Imagine the servants' quarters with half a dozen or more young randy men sleeping there every night,' said another former lover in the mid-1960s.

'We had the time of our lives.

'Sometimes I'd sneak into a boy's bedroom and there would be another servant there already, and even if they were already having sex they'd invite me to join them. I don't remember Billy coercing anyone he was good looking in those days and really quite a catch!'

There is no doubt that in later years Billy used his position occasionally to exploit junior members of staff. 'Billy offered young men jobs if he fancied them,' said one former male servant, 'and no sooner had they started work than he turned his often unwanted sexual attentions on them. If they failed to respond he could make life very difficult indeed.'

Up to seven junior butlers worked under Billy, and on quiet weekends there was always a risk that he would pounce. 'If he wanted you, I mean sexually, he made it clear that you wouldn't be at all popular if you turned him down,' recalled one former junior butler. Billy's unrestricted access to the Queen Mother's wine cellars provided a key tool in his seduction kit. 'As long as he didn't actually fall over in front of her she didn't mind a bit how drunk he was,' recalled one fellow servant.

David Smith, who left Clarence House after being pursued by Billy, recalled a ruthlessly efficient seduction technique. 'He was incredibly friendly at first and as I'd just left home and felt slightly lost I found his charm irresistible. I was such an innocent I thought he must be like this with everyone. I sensed a slight change when he suggested one day that I go for tea. When I said no, Billy's manner changed very subtly.
'You really must come, you know,' he said, and I could tell he really meant that this was an order.'

When the day finally ended at Clarence House, Billy would politely open the door to the Queen Mother's private quarters and, having bowed her in, would retire to bed. But the Queen Mother knew that on many nights he had no intention of staying in his room. Instead he trotted quietly down the back stairs and past the policeman into the night.

Once out into The Mall, Billy had two favourite routes. One was up St James's Street and along Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner in the 1950s and early 1960s a favourite haunt of gay men. Like the Labour peer Lord Bradwell, better known as Tom Driberg, with whom he may have had a brief affair, Billy was keener on oral than any other kind of sex.

'You have to remember that Billy was in his 30s before homosexuality ceased to be a crime,' says Don Jones, who knew Billy well around this time. 'In the old days, cottaging was one of the few ways gay men could get sex with the minimum risk of being caught. But even when it was no longer necessary, a lot of older men still found it more exciting, because it was slightly dangerous. But I suspect that even though this was relatively early in Billy's career, the Queen Mother would not have sacked him. She just seemed to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing.'

By the mid-1970s Billy had moved out of his room at the top of Clarence House. One reason, it was rumoured, was that the Queen Mother didn't want him bringing young men into the main house at all hours. At Gate Lodge, his bungalow away from the main building, he could get people in and out discreetly. All the Queen Mother apparently ever said was: 'You mustn't be too naughty in your free time, William.'

Billy's deepening relationship with the Queen Mother made him increasingly aware of his own power. And if power corrupts, it certainly began to corrupt Billy, who felt to some extent that he was invulnerable, especially when it came to the young men he met on his late-night forays. As one colleague put it: 'Billy began to think he could do as he pleased.'

'Well, of course we're bound to be mad, aren't we,' the Queen Mother once gladly told one of the Balmoral gillies who took her fishing. 'It's because we spent so many centuries marrying our own relatives!'
Remarkably, the relationship between Billy and the Queen Mother echoed that of Queen Victoria and her gillie or hunting attendant John Brown.

'The Queen Mother and William were always waving and smiling at each other, even if they were parting company for only a few minutes,' said one gillie.

In fact, William's mannerisms and whole demeanour became uncannily like the Queen Mother's. One of the footmen used to say: 'Billy's the Queen Mother in bloody drag!' But the Queen Mother didn't worry about being thought dotty or eccentric. She believed Billy's stage was Clarence House and his actors the Royals, their advisers and friends, whom he would carefully usher into and out of his mistress's daily routine.

On a typical day, the Queen Mother would 'potter quietly' around Clarence House until she felt it was time for her first gin, which might be around 11am. 'Throughout her life she drank almost continually,' recalled one adviser. If there happened to be no lunch on a particular day her consumption might increase significantly. Billy loved to tell how she almost 'came unstuck' once.

'We were being driven slowly along The Mall and she was doing her wonderful graceful smile, with her head tilted to one side, and waving steadily at the crowds. She'd had a few gins that morning, but no more than usual and I know that because I poured them myself. Then, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that, very slowly, she was sliding off the slippery leather seat and down on to the floor. As she sank out of sight she continued to smile and wave as if oblivious to the fact that the crowds could no longer see her. She just carried on smiling and waving until she was hauled back up into position by me. And then she carried on as if nothing had happened.'

'In many ways compared at least to the lives of ordinary people her life was rather empty,' remembered one former footman. Lunch, therefore, was something the Queen Mother loved, and her luncheon parties were vital to her good temper.

Well before lunch, therefore, Billy would start what other servants saw as his 'theatricals'. It is a word that echoes in almost everyone's memories of him. He was intensely theatrical, a director manqué. Like the Queen Mother, what he really loved was showbusiness. Many of Billy's friends were actors from the Queen Mother's favourite TV shows, especially Patricia Routledge from Keeping Up Appearances.

'The Queen Mother did several very good imitations,' said Billy. 'Her Blackadder was very good, but best of all was her extraordinary attempt to imitate Ali G. She would say, 'Darling, lunch was simply marvellous respec'.'

Billy was famous for making the lunch parties go with a swing. He knew the only way to get the Queen Mother's guests to really relax as the Queen Mother wanted was to make them tipsy. She liked to be relatively sober because she enjoyed seeing them become less inhibited as they became more inebriated.

Billy's manipulation of the bottle was legendary. If you tried to stop him filling your glass by putting your hand over it he would simply pour the wine through your fingers. When someone asked for water or a non-alcoholic drink, he would gravely incline his head, turn on his heel, and then ignore the request.

One guest recalled asking for water and receiving an almost savage look from Billy, who gave him a glass of wine as well. The water was quickly removed, while his wine glass was refilled even after the tiniest sip. When the Queen Mother finally entered, everyone would be 'significantly under the influence'.

'We got to the stage,' one lunch guest recalled, 'at which we were vying with each other to say increasingly risque things that might amuse the Queen Mother. Every bit of conversation was directed at her, even though we vaguely pretended we were really talking to each other.
'I remember saying a well-known actor was a complete a***, and then freezing in horror. But then I noticed the Queen Mother was smiling broadly, and she said, 'Did you say complete?'

The Queen Mother was particularly fond of a dish known as oeufs Drumkilbo, a rich mix based on eggs and mayonnaise and named after the next estate to Balmoral.

For pudding she enjoyed After Eight ice-cream, an extraordinary concoction involving two boxes of the mints. Another favourite was soufflé Rothschild, requiring, originally, real gold leaf.

When the Queen Mother's luncheon guests had left, Billy could sense which of them it was safe to ridicule or at least gently mock. 'William, you must tell me what you thought of so-and-so,' she would say. Billy would raise his eyebrows, and toss his head a little to one side. 'Well, I'm afraid words simply fail me. Pearls before swine.' The Queen Mother would throw her head back and laugh out loud.

'I think she was definitely rather in love with Billy,' recalled his friend Noel Kelly. 'We all thought it. He was the only person in the household who seemed to her to be in touch with the bawdy, funny, irreverent world outside the horribly closed-up, serious world of the Royals. He also stood up to her now and then, as no one else ever did, and he reminded her of the fun and gaiety of the 1920s, which is where she really lived.'

A typical day for Billy would start around 6am, when he would spend at least half an hour carefully dressing in his white tie and tails. He would then go into the kitchens to inspect with a very serious look the tray of the Queen Mother's breakfast tea and biscuits, or tea and a bowl of seeds and stalk off like an elegant if rather gloomy heron.

It has been said that he was the only male servant allowed into her bedroom without knocking, but this was almost certainly something Billy himself put about.

Living a life that was like a fairytale fantasy was all the Queen Mother ever knew. Near the end of her life, she is rumoured to have employed around 60 personal attendants at any one time.

'We had to make sure that fresh flowers were ready every morning,' Billy explained. 'They were changed every day because if they were not fresh she immediately noticed. They affected her whole mood.'

The Queen Mother rarely lifted a finger to help herself, even when she was perfectly healthy. If she wanted the window opened she would ask Billy; if she wanted a book from a side table three feet away she would ask Billy. In later years, when he was a little disillusioned, Billy would sometimes say, almost under his breath: 'I spent most of my life standing around waiting.'

In one photograph he is carrying a corgi wrapped in a blanket up the stairs of an aircraft. 'Well, I did get cross with her sometimes,' Billy recalled, 'because she had no idea how the rest of the world lived. She would have hired an aeroplane just for the dogs if it had been necessary. She would leave me a letter asking me to arrange for a helicopter to arrive 20 minutes later as she wanted a slightly longer luncheon. It never occurred to her that it might have been very expensive to keep a helicopter waiting.'

The Queen Mother disliked bad news or anything gloomy, so most days Billy would put on one of her favourite George Gershwin records, which she might insist on playing over and over again. She told Billy that the happiest period of her life had been her 20s, which coincided with the Jazz Age.

Sometimes she would make Billy waltz her around her private sitting room. Dancing, he recalled, 'was above all things the pastime she pursued with a real passion, and as she had few partners who were deemed suitable, I was often drafted in. And she might decide to dance on a whim when one was least expecting it, perhaps five minutes before her luncheon guests were due to start arriving.'

Billy claimed the Queen Mother could waltz him off his feet even into her 80s, and would say, 'We really are a sprightly pair of old girls, aren't we, William?' or, 'Shall we dance out into The Mall? Wouldn't that surprise everyone? One's relatives would not be amused.' On one memorable visit to Elton John's house near Windsor Castle, accompanied as ever by Billy, she insisted on dancing with the singer while wearing one of his glittering sequined jackets.

Occasionally, the Queen Mother found herself feeling down, so on one such day Billy suggested the two of them take an impromptu lunch at The Ritz. The Queen Mother insisted they should eat in the public dining room. The shock on the faces of the other diners, Billy never forgot. But it was a long luncheon, and no one dared leave until at last the Queen Mother and Billy rose from their table.
As she left, the other diners no doubt relieved their ordeal was over broke into applause.

Billy's working day rarely ended before 11pm. Fuelled by her favourite Tanqueray gin, the Queen Mother could keep going for hours, and was often heard to say there was no point going to bed early as she had nothing to get up for in the morning. Typically, it never occurred to her that other people, especially the servants, were not so lucky. When the day finally ended at Clarence House, Billy would politely open the door to the Queen Mother's private quarters and bow her in.

As the long hours and alcohol took their toll, Billy began to slow down. He retained an echo of his good looks, but his face was increasingly puffy and red. He told one friend in the mid-1990s he was enjoying growing old with the Queen Mother, although she was actually more than 30 years his senior. 'He was like an old family pet,' one contemporary recalled.

That the Queen Mother always backed Billy proved, in the long run, a disaster. It meant he was safe only while she lived. He must have known he would almost certainly outlive her, yet he enjoyed making enemies among those who, once she was dead, would have the power to get rid of him.

In the last decade of the Queen Mother's life, Billy's drinking became a serious matter. Sir Alastair Aird, one of the senior equerries, knew there was nothing he could do for now. Reporting Billy to the Queen Mother would be worse than useless.
But as the Queen Mother approached her centenary, her mind began to fail. She may have looked the same to the public, but in private she forgot things and became muddled. When she could no longer insist that Billy should continue to be her close companion, all the doors were locked against her former favourite.

Billy was hurt by this, as he had a great deal of experience of looking after her when she was ill. When she went down with colds, only he was allowed to make a hot toddy 'strong enough to numb all feeling' After her two hip operations, he was one of the few people she would allow to take her arm so long as they were in private.

When the Queen Mother died in her sleep aged 101, Billy was not told by a member of the Royal household. Whatever his faults, this might seem particularly callous. When a reporter from a tabloid rang to tell him, he was so shocked he could hardly speak. In the only interview Billy ever gave to the media a snatched 30-second clip he said simply: 'I loved her'

.

Backstairs Billy: The Life of William Tallon, The Queen Mother's Most Devoted Servant by Tom Quinn is published by Robson Press, priced £20. Pre-order for £16 before March 22 at http://www.mailbookshop.co.uk p&p is free for a limited time.

A number of deluded souls insist that the following video captures a bewigged Boris Johnson fleeing the scene of a Buck House "quickie," but we must now revise that opinion: it is likely a staff member

[video]https://youtu.be/3ofq0En5BMw[/video]