The Balmoral Staff Called the Queen Mother 'The Chief Toad' — And the Reason Was Worse

At Ballater, Aberdeenshire, in the staff toolshed of the Balmoral estate, in the summer of 1986, an under-gardener in his forties — name on file with this channel by way of his cousin in the comments — used a term in front of his colleagues to refer to the woman in residence at Birkhall, four miles south. The term was 'The Chief Toad.' It was not affectionate. It was not a one-off. Across the gardening staff, the household, the gamekeepers, the kitchen at Birkhall and the kitchen at Balmoral, it was the term they used when she could not hear them. The woman in question was Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, eighty-six years old, on her annual six-week summer stay. The under-gardener's cousin watched this channel in May two thousand and twenty-six and left a comment that, within twenty days, had two hundred and thirty-one likes. The country was sold a saint. The staff who poured her tea had another name for her. Here it is, with the receipts.