Were RP mangoes Queen Mum’s favorite?

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — Was Britain’s Queen Mother, who will finally be laid to rest at Windsor Castle today, the most royal and prominent consumer of Philippine mangoes?

"Mangoes were among her favorite fruits," said British Andrew Langston, general manager of the Holiday Inn resort here. Langston had worked for years as personal attendant to members of the royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana.

He had stayed with them at the Buckingham Palace and traveled with them to their other palaces, such as Windsor and Balmoral, on the royal yacht Britannia or the royal aircraft.

Langston’s closest brush with the Queen Mother was from 1982 and 1985 when he attended to her at the Windsor and Sandringham castles.

"She just loved mangoes," Langston said. Apart from mangoes, the Queen Mother also hankered for plums and was "crazy" about macadamia nuts, said Langston ,who trained extensively in food and beverage at Thanet College in Kent before accepting a prominent post at the famous Cafe Royal in London’s Picadilly Circus.

Langston could not say for sure where the mangoes came from, but he would not discount the possibility that the mangoes the Queen Mother relished came from the Philippines.

Baguio-based journalist Franklin Cimatu, an ardent mango lover, surmised that the Queen Mother’s mangoes probably came from Guimaras island in southern Philippines. "Philippine mangoes are known all over the world as the sweetest," he said. "Those from Guimaras are the only mangoes whose export has never been interrupted even when the US banned mangoes from other parts of the country because of some contamination or other."

Regardless of whether the late Queen Mother had indeed enjoyed Philippine mangoes, Filipinos are probably enchanted with the mere possibility that their favorite fruit went through royal digestion.

The death of the Queen Mother, born Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon 101 years ago in the farmlands of Strathmore in Scotland, also leaves behind a lesson in moderation.

Langston recalled that the Queen Mother never smoked and enjoyed moderate amounts of gin mixed with what he knew as "dubonnet" as well as German wine.

"She took everything in moderation," Langston said.