From publicly humiliating US presidents to poking fun at world leaders. >> Sounds like President Trump. President Obama. >> Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t just the longest reigning monarch. She was by far the funniest. Ever seen the queen attack a cake. >> I think I might just put a knife in. >> I think that’s a really good idea.
>> See if it works. Oh yes, it goes in beautifully. >> Beautifully. >> Somebody else can finish it off. Do the rest of it. >> And if that knife wasn’t big enough, why not try a sword? >> This is going to work in true house. There is a knife there. There is a knife in I know there is something more unusual. >> But who knows? Maybe she learned from previous cake disasters.
Her Majesty’s humor and lust for life was contagious, and some of her best and happiest moments were captured at the horse races. Just look at her here at the Royal Ascot in 2013 when one of her horses took first place. Even winning a measly 16 pounds was enough to get her excited. >> Well, you get 16. >> 16. >> But actually, just about anything with animals made her act like a little girl again, even if it was just a tiny piglet scratching itself.
Queen Elizabeth wasn’t just funny. She was a top tier prankster. Here she is photobombing the Australian hockey team with that iconic cheeky grin. It was moments like this that just showed how down to earth and full of life and laughter the queen really was. Definitely a moment these hockey players will never forget.
>> But we just nailed the timing for some reason. >> That cheeky sense of humor was something she shared with her husband, Prince Phillip. Here he is photobombing a journalist on live TV with a grin that says he knew exactly what he was doing. It >> was the Duke himself who decided that they should spend the actual day of their anniversary on Malta for this very private of public couples.
Quite a romantic gesture. And don’t think the Queen and Prince Philip spared each other. Playing jokes was one of their favorite pastimes. like when she publicly teased him during their 50th anniversary celebration. >> All too often, I fear Prince Philip has had to listen to me speaking. Frequently, we have discussed my intended speech beforehand.
And as you will imagine, his views have been expressed in a forthright manner. >> Queen Elizabeth also loved to be silly and she knew how to be a good sport. For instance, did you know that she was an official 007 Bond girl? And most of people till today believe she jumped out of helicopter. >> A celebration.
I remember her innocent joy. Yes. When I told her that the leader of a friendly Middle Eastern country seemed actually to believe that she had jumped out of a helicopter in a pink dress and parachuted into the stadium. >> The spoof mission was so top secret that no one in the royal family even knew she was going to do it.
was actually a very well-kept secret. Probably uh more state secret than most of the uh intelligence documents that she receives, but uh it’s uh it was one of those ones where um nothing was told to any of us. >> And let’s not forget her equally funny spoof with Paddington Bear. Once again, the queen showed just how much of a sport she could be.
>> Perhaps you would like a marmalade sandwich. I always keep one for emergencies. >> So do I. I keep mine in here >> for later. >> The Queen and Prince Philip could make anyone laugh and from photo bombs to comedy sketches. But one thing they couldn’t stand, sitting still for official photos.
And when her majesty got restless, her comments were absolute gems. During a photo shoot with world leaders at the 2021 G7 summit, the queen was clearly not enjoying herself. >> How’s that? I just feel as if they were enjoying. >> And while sitting down for another photo shoot, she had this to say. >> And then there was this funny clip from a local British news station.
>> In this charming footage from 1985, her majesty jokes around with six former prime ministers as they all try to fit in one photo during a visit to Margaret Thatch’s Downing Street. But the best moment of all was when the queen almost snapped at a royal photographer who wanted to make changes to her wardrobe.
Even before the photo shoot started, the queen was already visibly agitated. >> Sound changing anything. I’ve done enough dressing like this. Thank you very much. >> So, just imagine Elizabeth’s response when the photographer actually dared to suggest that she make some alterations to the outfit. Well, the queen was not having it.
Could we try without the crown just it will look better less dressy because the guarder robe is so extremely dressy. What I mean is if you take you take the crown off just a little bit. >> Now what could be worse than crashing a photographer’s photo shoot? Maybe crashing someone’s wedding. And if you think wedding crashing was below the queen, then think again.
This unsuspecting couple was tying the knot when all of the sudden Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip showed up unannounced. And best of all, these people had never met the Queen before. The Queen and Prince Philip just happened to be in the same area while out on a royal engagement. >> Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Phillip, decided to pop in on a pair of newlywets, giving them and their jaw-dropped guest the shock of a lifetime.
>> Unsuspecting wedding couples and hockey players weren’t the only people she left speechless. More often than that, she even left politicians and foreign dignitaries caught tongue-tied. They say age brings wisdom. But in Queen Elizabeth’s case, it came with razor sharp wit. Nothing proved that more than when someone mentioned her age, like Canadian PM Justin Trudeau did in 2015.
At a Commonwealth dinner, he noted he was her 12th PM, just months before turning 90. And her response to Trudeau’s comment was nothing short of comedy gold. >> Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister of Canada, for making me feel so old. During a 2016 visit to Northern Ireland, the Queen met Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
When he politely asked how she was, her sharp reply caught everyone off guard. >> Hello. Are you >> Thank you very much. I’m still alive. >> Nice to see you again. >> Even when no one brought up her age, the queen found clever ways to joke about it. Like during a garden stroll with Sir David Atenbro, they touched on climate change, world politics, even President Trump.
But her majesty still slipped in a few age related zingers as only she could. >> There will be all kinds of different trees going here another 50 years. Maybe >> might be years. I won’t be here though. >> Moments later, Sir David couldn’t resist cracking a joke himself, spotting a sund dial planted in the shade. And naturally, the queen fired back with humor to match.
>> I was going to say sundial neatly planted in the shade. >> Isn’t it good? Yes. >> Had we thought of that, that it was planted in the shade. It wasn’t in the shade originally, I’m sure. But um maybe we could move it. >> But here’s the real question. Did they ever move it? According to palace insiders, the queen was so baffled by a sund dial in the shade, she immediately told staff to fix it.
>> And the sund dial. I’m led to believe that your impact on that sund dial is it has now been moved into the sun. So you can now tell the the Buckingham Palace gardener. So really, >> yes, you’ve had an impact. >> And those weren’t even the funniest moments from their garden stroll. In this next one, two US presidents became the butt of the joke.
And the queen didn’t hold back when a noisy helicopter hovered overhead. Clearly annoying her, she took a direct stab at both Trump and Obama. >> Sounds like President Trump. >> Speaking of presidents, let’s talk about one of the Queen’s funniest moment. Ever heard her called the talking hat? That nickname came from a 1991 White House visit when President Bush forgot to adjust the podium and all Americans could see was her hat moving behind it.
Long before memes, the queen was already going viral. But her humor wasn’t just for laughs. It helped her build real bonds with world leaders. >> Mr. President, thank you for your warm welcome to Washington and to the White House. >> Since no one could see her face, she became the first royal meme dubbed the talking hat by headlines worldwide.
But true to form, the queen took it with grace and humor. The very next day, she opened her address to Congress with a self-deprecating joke. >> I do hope you can see me today from where you are. George Bush Jr. also had a royal mishap. He botched the date and the queen’s reaction had everyone laughing. >> You helped our nation celebrate its bicesentennial in 17 in 1976.
>> She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child. You helped our nation celebrate its bicesentennial in 17 in 1976. She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child. >> And of course, Queen Elizabeth wasn’t done. She loved the last word. She got in one final jab at the state dinner. >> Mr.
President, I wondered whether I should start this toast saying, “When I was here in 1776, And just a quick note, if you like seeing incredible moments like these, >> I’ve started a new channel where I share more amazing clips. The link is in the description. to the queen. >> Despite Obama’s royal slip up, he and the queen shared plenty of laughs, like when Prince Harry pulled her into his playful feud with the Obamas during the 2016 Invictus game.
>> And if you’ve got the ability to be able to to ask the queen to to up one on the Americans, then uh then why not? >> Let’s watch it together. >> Yes. >> Let’s have a look. >> Hey, Prince Harry. Remember when you told us to bring it at the Invictus Games? >> Careful what you wish for. Oh, really? Please. Boom.
>> Of all the world leaders, Nelson Mandela may have been her favorite, not least because he gave charming compliments instead of reminding her of her age. Their bond was clear from their very first meeting in 1991, years before he became South Africa’s first black president. >> Well, your majesty, you’re looking well, take into account your tight schedule.
Tomorrow I’m going to see 16 people. I may not look so good tomorrow. >> Royal sources say Mandela and the Queen were lifelong friends on a firstname basis and often chatting by phone. Their bond was built on laughter, mutual respect, and Mandela’s effortless charm, which with Queen Elizabeth always went a long way.
>> Very nice to see you. >> How are you? Very well. Thank you. You look younger every time I see you. >> Which Queen Elizabeth moment was your favorite? If we missed one, let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear about it. And don’t forget to subscribe for more royal moments just like these.
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the right sentence said at the right moment can completely change the entire direction of a relationship. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary human beings behind music’s greatest legends.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
