Backstairs Billy

William Tallon, who died in 2007, was a shopkeeper’s son from the Midlands who worked for the Queen Mother for more than fifty years and became her most trusted servant. Known as ‘Backstairs Billy’, he was charming, amusing, occasionally bitchy - and extremely promiscuous. Billy adored the Queen Mother and she adored Billy; perhaps because of his high-camp style and outrageous remarks about the well-born equerries, royal press people and advisers, but mostly because he made her gin and tonics just the way she liked them - nine-tenths gin and one-tenth tonic. Outrageously funny, scandalous, sometimes shocking, but always fascinating, this is the life story of one of the most original characters ever to have graced the royal household.