PA MediaA relative of the late Queen claims she once refused to open an airport terminal after he was prevented from boarding a flight with his guns on his way to visit her at Balmoral.
Lord Ivar Mountbatten, 62, a first cousin once removed of Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, revealed he was prevented from taking his shotguns on a flight from Bristol Airport to Aberdeen.
He told broadcaster Gyles Brandreth’s Rosebud podcast Queen Elizabeth was so irritated she told him: “They want me to open their new terminal. I don’t think I will now.”
A spokeswoman for Bristol Airport said it was always the case that Princess Anne would open the site, and not the late Queen.
Lord Mountbatten described how a “sweet check-in lady” told him the hold was accessible from the cabin so the guns would not be secure.
He claimed Bristol Airport staff refused to budge despite him telling a manager: “The Queen’s sending me a car and she’s expecting me for tea.”
In the end, his guns were left in the police armory at the airport and Lord Mountbatten took the flight to Scotland to join the Queen for the shooting weekend in the Highlands.
Later that day at Balmoral, when he recounted the tale to the Queen, it led to her “getting rather irritated” and dispatching an officer to arrange transportation of the guns, Lord Mountbatten said.
AFP via Getty ImagesThe aristocrat, who is also Elizabeth II’s distant cousin, told Brandreth: “She said…’I would like Lord Ivar’s guns to be up here tomorrow morning. Please see to it’.
“Whereupon she turns back to me and she looks at me over her glasses with a glint in her eye and she says ‘They want me to open their new terminal’. She says ‘I don’t think I will now’.”
Lord Mountbatten added: “So every time I go back to Bristol Airport now, it was opened by the Princess Royal, I have a quiet laugh to myself.”
The Princess Royal first opened a terminal building at Bristol Airport in 2000, and later opened a terminal extension in 2015.
Bristol Airport’s spokeswoman said: “Bristol Airport followed royal protocol which was to request a member of the royal family to open the new terminal through the Lord Lieutenants office.
“The Princess Royal was always assigned for our area, never the late Queen.”
Lord Mountbatten is a farmer and businessman, and in later life has become a reality TV star and this year appeared in the third season of the reality show The Traitors US.
His great-uncle was Earl Mountbatten – Prince Philip’s uncle and mentor, who was assassinated by the IRA in 1979.