Loyal but louche, diligent but drunk, discreet in word but indiscreet in life, the Royal Family’s most notable servant, ‘Backstairs Billy’ Tallon is to be honoured in a play in London’s West End in the autumn, given equal billing with the woman he devotedly served for 50 years, the Queen Mother.
From the death of her husband, George VI, in 1952, until her own death in 2002, this dapper, bouffant-haired flunkey never left the former Queen Elizabeth’s side. He poured her drinks, organised her parties and listened to her secrets. And he was the only person permitted to enter her rooms without knocking.
While the Queen Mother lived, Billy Tallon reigned supreme at Clarence House, but tragically, he ended up in the gutter, literally.
In one respect, his fate had been mirrored by Angela Kelly, the late Queen Elizabeth II’s dresser and confident. When his royal employer died, Billy, son of a Coventry shopkeeper, was sacked and then ejected from his grace and favour home in the shadow of Clarence House.
Angela Kelly, daughter of a Liverpool docker, and in effect, the late sovereign’s gatekeeper, suffered a similar flight from grace at the hands of jealous courtiers.
Though adored by the late Queen, she ruffled feathers among other royals and recently had to leave her rent-free home on the Windsor estate to move to the Peak District.
Billy’s rise and fall will be portrayed in a comedy called ‘Backstairs Billy’, starring Downton Abbey actress Penelope Wilton as the Queen Mother, with Welsh performer and singer Luke Evans playing the title role. It’s a story worth telling.
When George VI died, the Queen Mother was only 51 and far from ready to be put out to pasture, but with her daughter firmly on the throne, the old Elizabeth had to find a new life for herself and a way to pass her time.
Enter, below stairs, William John Stephenson Tallon, a 15-year-old who’d written to Buckingham Palace begging for a job.
He started out by walking Elizabeth’s corgis, a position he was to continue doing for the next half-century, but soon his talent to entertain was spotted, and he started a long climb up the stairs, into the Queen Mother’s heart.
Shaking off the shadows of grief, Clarence House became what one courtier described as ‘a glorious gin palace’, with Billy, more usually known as William, the man to pour the Queen size drinks.
‘When the lights go on in Clarence House, it’s showtime’, he said theatrically, and so began a lifetime of drinking and partying, well-behaved, but turbo-charged by Billy’s dynamite cocktails, which kept the Queen Mum content for the rest of her days.
William Tallon succeeded Walter Taylor as Steward and Page of the Backstairs, this is how he earned the tabloid moniker ‘Backstairs Billy’.
William Tallon was on duty from early in the morning until the Queen Mother went to bed, and he was allowed to enter her private rooms without knocking and purchased the Christmas presents that she gave to others.
William Tallon had a partner of over 30 years, his name was Reginald Wilcock who became a footman at Buckingham Palace in 1954.
Reginald Wilcock was also a valet to the Duke of Windsor in Paris from 1957 to 1959, before joining the Queen Mother’s entourage at Clarence House in 1960 as a footman.
He’d been the House Deputy Steward and the Queen Mother’s Page of the Presence since 1978. On 4 August 2000, Reginald Wilcock served the Queen Mother her 100th birthday morning tea in her room. That night, whilst at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden with the Queen Mother, William Tallon learnt that Reginal Wilcock was dying. A week later, on 11 August, Reginald Wilcock died, aged 66. William Tallon arranged a magnificent funeral for him at the Queen’s Chapel in Marlborough House.
After Reginald Wilcock’s demise, William Tallon reportedly suffered from depression, and he reportedly felt sidelined when the Queen Mother turned to a younger team of attendants for her nursing care.
However, when she passed away in 2002, at the age of 101, William Tallon was said to be heartbroken.
Following this William Tallon left Clarence House, where he lived in the Lodge House. He settled in a ground-floor flat with a garden in Kennington, southeast London, where he was discovered dead on 23 November 2007, aged 72, as a result of liver failure.
William Tallon’s funeral took place at the Queen’s Chapel in St James Palace, with readings from Sir Derek Jacobi and Patricia Routledge. The funeral was attended by more than 200 people, including the Earl of Snowdon, Lady Sarah Chatto, June Brown, Paul O’Grady, Phyllida Law, Sir Roy Strong, Roy Petley and Keith Barron.
A bio that was written by Tom Quinn was called ‘Royal Life of William Tallon’. It said that the Queen Mother was often drunk and dotty for the final 20 years of her life. Whether true or not ‘hats off to the Queen Mother’, although Buckingham Palace responded angrily to these suggestions.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 