We are a great grandmother!

Mrs Thatcher, British Prime Minister for ten years, first came out with the phrase
'We are a grandmother' in the 1980s.
Britain's queen has been a great grandmum for a while now. She has not made any personal announcements about it. After all, she's not the daughter of a grocer.

A range of the not very great and the far from good (Dr David Owen, John Major on the phone and a couple of history professors) were rounded up this morning by the 'Today' programme on BBC 4 - the only TV or radio station that still plays the national anthem when the queen AND her husband have official birthdays - to tell us all how simply spiffing it all was that Britain's current queen had reigned over the Brits for longer than any of their other monarchs.

But they all struggled to explain in what Elizabeth's (the second's) greatness lay. In the end they found different ways of repeating that she had gone on and on and on - and that was, well, bloody marvellous!

'She has secured', stated the sonorous Doctor, 'three generation of the royal succession.'

There you have it. The purpose of a good monarch in a nutshell.