On Her Majesty's Secret Snack Bowl: Police Were Ordered To Leave Elizabeth's Nuts Untouched

Here's a weird little tidbit that's emerged from the phone hacking trial for executives from Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid: For reasons not made the least bit clear in this BBC story, on Thursday, the jury was read emails from an NoW editor about suspicious nut-related goings-on at Buckingham Palace. Specifically, Queen Elizabeth was "irritated" by police officers taking nuts from bowls left around the palace for the Queen to nibble on:

According to an email sent by Clive Goodman, ex-royal editor at the News of the World, she was "upset" by it.

The journalist added that a memo was sent to palace officers, telling them to "keep their sticky fingers out".

Does the BBC provide any context at all for this tale of royal nut-cadging? None at all! In fact, the news of the edict to lay off Her Majesty's royal nuts is interspersed with information about one of the defendants being declared unfit to stand trial. Which in some ways makes it all the more mysterious and wonderful.

Seriously, we are just going to copypasta the section of the story about the nuts, because WTF, England?

In the email to former NoW editor Andy Coulson, which Mr Goodman also had sent to himself, he wrote: "Problem is that police on patrol eat the lot... memo now gone around to all palace cops telling them to keep their sticky fingers out."

The email continued: "Queen furious about police stealing bowls of nuts and nibbles left out for her in apartments in the BP/Queen's corridor. She has a very savoury tooth and staff leave out cashews, Bombay Mix, almonds etc. Prob is that police on patrol eat the lot."

"She started marking the bowls to see when the levels dipped," he added.

Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC told the jury the email said the Queen was "upset" because "apparently they were helping themselves to nuts".

He said: "They were all being scoffed by police. That irritated Her Majesty apparently."

Amid laughter in court, Mr. Justice Saunders told the jury that the claim that officers were stealing nuts was "an unproven allegation".

There is literally no mention of how this testimony fit into the rest of the case, or what the attorneys (or "bannisters," as they are known in Olde England) said about the emails -- no context whatsoever, and damned if we're going to spoil our day by trying to find out -- something about the News of the World staff knowing a lot of stuff that they shouldn't have had access to, but there's not a word about how Goodman supposedly came across the salty journalistic morsels.

Even so, while it's no Nixon traipsing drunkenly around the White House in the middle of the night, having conversations with a painting of Lincoln and muttering about the Jews, it's a pretty good story for a slow news day.

[ BBC ]