He says: ‘I cannot claim to have met the Queen - but I did spend a couple of hours very close to her!
‘It was in May, 2002, when Her Majesty was celebrating her Golden Jubilee. She came to Taunton on May 2 with the Duke of Edinburgh as part of a jubilee tour of the Unted Kingdom.
‘She arrived at Taunton Station and there were literally thousands of people lining the route she took to get to a farmers market in the town centre.
After that she went into Vivary Park where, again, there was hardly room to move.
‘Everywhere the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh went they were greeted with enthusiastic cheers and people of all ages waving Union flags. Mind you it helped that the weather was glorious.
‘At the time I was working as the Somerset correspondent with the BBC and we were allowed to follow the royal couple closely - often just a couple of metres from where they met the crowds.
‘But for me the most personal moment of the Royal occasion came as they ended their hour-long visit to the county town.
‘The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were about to board the Royal helicopter which - as I recall - was waiting for them at the cricket ground behind Vivary Park. All of a sudden a young child broke from the crowd and handed a posy of flowers to the Queen.
She graciously accepted then turned to hand the posy to her lady in waiting.
The problem was her lady in waiting had already gone off in another direction to get into a car - and the only person standing behind the Monarch was me. So I stepped forward to accept the flowers from Her Majesty so she could board the helicopter.
Was my cameraman recording the moment? - No he wasn’t!