Giving a rare interview to the Daily Mail's Femail supplement, Her Majesty said today: “I've got nothing against the monarchy per se, but I'm just not really that bothered about it either way.”
She added: “If there's a street party going on near the palace, I might pop along for some nibbles, but it all depends on what the weather's like and whether it clashes with Dickinson's Real Deal on ITV.”
Injuries to fellow midfielders Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry have propelled Henderson into contention for a place in England manager Roy Hodgson's team for the championships in Ukraine and Poland.
But speaking to Match magazine, Henderson's mother Pamela admitted she wouldn't have him in her squad.
She said: “Jordan's a lovely boy, always has been.
“He was never any trouble growing up, and always tidied his room when I asked.
“But a dynamic central midfielder capable of besting the likes of Xavi and Iniesta? Fuck, no!”
Henderson's eight-year-old brother Daniel added: “You'd think it'd be cool to have an older brother who plays for Liverpool and England, but weirdly, it's not.”
BEING afraid of bees or struggling to complete a crossword will make you eligible to compete in this summer's Paralympics, organisers of the games have confirmed.
The list of qualifying 'disabilities' was expanded after organisers discovered there are no ramps or lifts to allow people with real handicaps to enter their stadia when the games begin in London in August.
Paralympics spokeswoman Wendy Swann said: “We had a meeting this morning where we agreed that we faced a straight choice between installing ramps at considerable expense, or expanding the list of eligible disabilities to include virtually anything.
“It was a quick meeting.”
Here is a list showing some of the new 'disabilities' and some traditional ailments which no longer qualify.
IN
OUT
Britain's most famous Paralympian, Tanni Grey-Thompson (pictured above) who won 11 gold medals at Paralympic Games, described the decision as “disappointing”.
But the move was welcomed by loft insulation salesman Martin Hayman, of Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire.
Mr Hayman (pictured, right), who now qualifies to represent Great Britain in the 100m backstroke courtesy of his hayfever, said: “This is a wonderful, if overdue, decision taken by the Paralympic authorities.
“It's great that my mildly irritating condition will no longer prevent me from representing my nation at the highest level of sport.”
Writers from 25 newspapers and magazines have spent the last fortnight holed up in a boardroom at the Daily Mail's offices in London to agree on the SWZ.
They have been scrutinising over 3,000 photos of famous women printed in their own publications over the past three years.
The panel's chair, Lydia de Rossi, who edits Fluff! magazine, said: “It has been an exhausting process, with much debate and disagreement, but we are happy with the result. The breakthrough came when we examined a sequence of photographs printed in the Daily Express in 2010, showing Kate Moss eating an egg and cress sandwich.
“We were all agreed that by the time she had digested the last bite, Kate had gone from being grotesquely skeletal to a beached whale.
“We then went to Waitrose and bought an ordinary egg and cress sandwich, and weighed a small corner of it, similar to the last bite taken by Kate.
“That's where we got the magic figure of 2.3grams from.”
Ms de Rossi added: “We are not out to demonise celebrities in any way.
“On the contrary, the SWZ will soon become a vital tool for them in preventing them from looking revolting in public.
“In order to stay safely in the SWZ, all they will need to do is drink calorie-neutral meals through a straw and carry a portable treadmill with them at all times.”
Our photos show skin-and-bones Kate (right) and chubby chubster Kate (left).
Brushing off suggestions that meaningful action to prevent their gruesome deaths would have been more helpful, several of the victims told our reporter that condemnation of the Syrian regime by Western leaders was “as good as a peace deal or military intervention.”
One mother, who was gunned down alongside her eight children, said: “Even as the bullets were raining down on us, our spirits were lifted by the certain knowledge that UK Foreign Secretary William Hague would publicly denounce the slaughter as “jolly mean” within 24 hours.”
A father-of-six who was blown apart by an artillery shell added: “Some people are saying that it would be better if the leaders of the free world did something, rather than simply racing to be the first one to criticise this massacre as a nasty business, but we want them to know that their empty words fill our hearts more than the promise of an immediate end to the bloodshed ever could.”
At a press conference this afternoon, UK Prime Minister David Cameron described the killings as “rather inappropriate” and said if there were more deaths, he would consider reducing the number of free Olympic tickets given to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family.
Other Western leaders were equally quick to condemn the massacre, which has claimed the lives of more than 100 men, women and children.
US President Barack Obama told reporters in Washington that the killings were “unhelpful” and he promised to give President al-Assad a frosty glare the next time he saw him.
New French President Francoise Hollande said the killers' actions “lacked grace and sophistication” while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that given the choice, she would rather the massacre hadn't happened at all.
Meanwhile, UN special envoy Kofi Annan, who is fitting in work on a peace plan for the region around work on his debut solo album, said a roadmap to lasting peace in Syria would be published as soon as the United Nations headquarters in New York were restocked with laminated paper.
The calculator, available through the HMRC website, crashed hours after launching this morning when the proprietors of all Britain's daily newspapers logged on at the same time, to find out whether they were successfully avoiding 100% of their tax obligations, or merely 98%.
While the majority of our cash has been spent on the Tax Calculator itself, the next biggest spending areas are: Health (7%), Education (3%), Defence (2.1%), and Theresa May's hair extensions (1.2%) .
Mr Baron Cohen told Empire magazine that he dreamt up the idea of a foul-mouthed, psychotic and mediocre soccer ace more than ten years ago.
He said: “I'd always thought that a Premier League footballer would be a rich source of satire, so in 2001 I took up football and started playing twice a week down at my local park.
“It wasn't long before I was good enough to earn a contract with Manchester City, who back then were shite.
“I was always careful not to train too hard, because it was important that I remained absolutely mediocre to protect the essence of the satire – that a person with such limited talent but such a high opinion of himself can earn a vast and entirely undeserved fortune, while behaving like a wild hyena with a Twitter account.”
The result of ten years work is Joey: A Footballer, a feature-length film which Baron Cohen will begin shooting early next year.
People who are easily shocked have been shocked by the revelation.
Alex Borthwick, a spokesman for surprises, said: “This is very surprising.
“It's going to become one of those 'where were you when you heard the news?' moments, like when The Stig from Top Gear was revealed to be Maureen Rees from Driving School back in the 90s.”
Mr Cameron has told close friends and his mirror that he is “this close” to trebling UK growth within the next year and saving the euro.
The Prime Minister and his closest advisers are refusing to release any details about the rescue plan, but rumours are circulating around Westminster that it involves two cups attached by string, some twine, a bottle of white spirit and some sticky back plastic.
Senior Tory figures are so confident of the plan's success, however, that they have moved on to debating what memorable quote Mr Cameron should use to seal the deal.
Foreign Secretary William Hague is understood to prefer “Hyperinflate this, motherfucker!”, while Home Secretary Theresa May is believed to prefer “Shall we go back to eurozone or mine?”
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, meanwhile, is believed to be on the verge of quitting his post after his suggestion, “Hey Merkel, suck on my austerity measures!”, was ruled out for being inflammatory.
Now comedian and actor David Walliams is preparing for his least ambitious fundraising challenge yet – a two-hour Boggle marathon to help find a cure for nits.
Mr Walliams, 41, will play simultaneously on three Boggle trays against nine other players in his living room in South London at the end of June.
He will be restricted to two toilet breaks and three refreshment stops during his 120-minute wordplay extravaganza, which he hopes will raise up to £50 towards research into nits (also known as head lice – see picture).
Mr Walliams has been a fan of Boggle since he was a teenager.
The game involves 16 dice, with letters printed on all six sides.
The dice are shaken inside a box so they fall randomly into a tray, and players are then challenged to make as many words as they can in three minutes from the letters facing upwards.
Mr Walliams said: “It's going to be tough. I've been training intensively for this challenge for eight months - basically by occasionally watching Countdown when it happens to be on when I'm at home.
“Swimming the English Channel was hard, but if a J and a Z come up in the same game of Boggle, this could be harder.”
He added: “It will all be worth it, though, because nits are really gross.”
Earlier this year, Facebook published the results of the 2011 Like Census, which revealed that 17-year-old girls from Florida were the world's most prolific Like Whores, while 82-year-old men from North Korea were least likely to be Like Whores.
Now, though, Mr Zuckerberg is threatening to go one step further by identifying the individuals who most flagrantly flaunt their 'likes' and put out on a first status update.
On his own Facebook page this morning, Mr Zuckerberg outed the world's top three Like Whores.
Heading the list was Candy Ramirez, a waitress from Miami, Florida, who has liked 13,000 comments, 8,000 status updates, 3,500 links, 1,200 pictures and 850 videos in the last year.
In second was Teagan Flanagan, a cheerleader from Detroit, Michigan, who once spent a whole weekend messaging her Facebook friends, asking them to post what they were having for dinner, so she could 'like' every one of their status updates.
And in third was Ryan Foyle, a hairdresser from Perth, Western Australia, who employs three people to 'like' comments on his behalf while he's sleeping, and who has taken out like insurance worth $3million in case he breaks his fingers.
Mr Zuckerberg also revealed there is a simple formula for working out whether somebody is a Like Whore or not.
If, in the last year, you have liked comments or status updates in at least three of the following five categories, you are a Like Whore.
Why not generate a transient feeling of warmth and well-being by 'Liking' this story on Facebook and sharing it with your friends?
Sixty sows and 55 boars were given the groundbreaking Alpha Veritas drug at the University of Michigan's biochemistry laboratory earlier this month.
They were then asked a series of questions, ranging from basic requests for their names and addresses, to more complex interrogation about their political and religious views, and the whereabouts of big bombs.
But the results were disappointing.
“They just grunted”, said Professor Laslo Bodarovic, who spearheaded the development of Alpha Veritas.
“We tried administering the drug in various doses, at different times of the day, when the pigs were hungry, full, bored, playful, happy, depressed - but whatever we did, the results were the same.
“We've asked everybody we know, even people who are really good with animals and not at all afraid of pigs, but nobody has been able to say for sure whether they are telling the truth or not.”
Alpha Veritas was developed thanks to $6billion of funding from The Pentagon, which wants a foolproof truth serum to use on terror suspects.
But if a second round of interviews with Parakeets does not yield better results, the drug could be scrapped altogether.
“We hope it doesn't come to that,” said Prof Bodarovic.
“People should remember there were similar difficulties when the original Polygraph machine was first tested on crane flies back in the 1920s.
“It would be a sad day for America if we gave up the progress we've made with Alpha Veritas, even if the drug has cost $10million-a-grunt so far.”
Your Dreams Are My Nightmares – a 258-page handbook by Danish psychologist, Professor Eirik Wendel - contains more than 600 suggestions for ways to pass the time while your companions are boring you witless with vague recollections of things they imagined in their sleep.
The book's introduction says: “As soon as your friend or loved one says anything along the lines of “What you just said really reminds me of this dream I had last night”, you must immediately zone out, or risk getting sucked in to a cyclone of unspeakable boredom, which could last from 20 seconds to 12 minutes, depending on how dull the other person is.
“Once you have zoned out, take refuge in the 600-plus activities listed in this handbook, any one of which would be infinitely more rewarding than listening to your friend for a single second.”
Prof Wendel's top 10 suggestions include: counting to 20 in French, thinking about the best physical features of an attractive celebrity, miming the use of a yo-yo, painting an egg, and swearing internally.
Scientists, poets and philosophers have struggled for centuries to explain why other people's dreams are so boring, but Prof Wendel offers an analogy by way of explanation.
He said: “Imagine a friend telling you he's just seen the most amazing film in the history of cinema.
“Briefly, you'd be captivated, but your interest would soon fade when your friend was unable to explain the plot coherently, describe any of the film's sequences or name any of the actors involved.
“And your interest would disappear completely when he informed you that neither you nor anybody else in the world would ever be able to see this film.”
Earlier this year, it was revealed that US military officials tell inmates at Guantanamo Bay about their dreams as an alternative to waterboarding.
One former inmate said: “I'd survived all their torture methods - sleep deprivation, white noise, waterboarding - but when this one guard started telling me about this dream he'd had, in which his mother-in-law was taking him to a puppet show, but then she turned into his former geography teacher, and then all of a sudden he was in a post office but all of the stamps kept turning into butterflies and flying off, I just cracked, and without meaning to I started revealing that I'd hidden 3kg of explosives inside Charlie Sheen.”
Sunday evening's 7pm broadcast – Rudolf Hess and his Mysterious Aversion to Tinsel – will be the last.
The channel's director, Clive Thorpe, admitted ideas had been running low for some time.
He said: “The whole of last week was spent throwing around World War Two buzzwords, like Eva Braun, U-Boat and Spam, but we couldn't come up with anything.
“I even suggested doing a show about how The Blitz affected the flourishing jodhpur trade, but it turns out we've done that. Twice.
“When I think of some of the classic programmes we produced in the glory years of the early 2000s – such as Great Paper Planes of the Battle of Britain, Stalingrad: A Right Kerfuffle, and Would Hitler Have Liked Marmite? - I do get a bit misty-eyed.”
Asked whether his channel could have considered covering any of the years of human history either side of 1939 to 1945, Mr Thorpe replied: “No, absolutely not.”
Those were the traumatised words of Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch, who last night lifted the lid on 18 months of torture at the hands of bland recorded messages.
At the media launch of his new book - "I'm not an unexpected item in a bagging area, I'm Benedict" - Mr Cumberbatch told journalists how the ordeal began.
He said: “It started just after I'd finished filming the first series of Sherlock.
“I'd boarded a train from London Paddington and when I got off at Reading I heard this voice telling me to mind the gap between the train and platform.
“There was nothing unusual in that, but the voice kept repeating the message during the whole of my journey home.
“Eventually it stopped and I thought nothing more of it.
“But about three weeks later, I was walking my Lurcher in the Forest of Dean when I heard another voice, still recognisably human but just as detached and monotone as the one before, telling me really insistently that the number I'd called could not be recognised.
“I ran home and I'm sad to say I've never seen my dog since.
“But the worst of it has been the last few months, when I've had this horrible message telling me I'm an unexpected item in a bagging area.
“I hear it wherever I am – at the zoo, in the bath, on the set of Sherlock, everywhere.
“I don't know what bagging area it's referring to, and I don't know what it wants me to do about it.
“It's so hard to deal with and I just want it to stop.
“I'm tired of feeling so helpless, so powerless. I know there must be other victims out there, and I hope by speaking out I can at least let them know they are not alone.”
If you've been bullied by automated messages, help is probably available. Just try googling it or something.
Mr Murdoch made the claim in response to a completely unrelated question about corporate governance at News International.
With a crocodile tear rolling down his cheek, Mr Murdoch said: “I heard what Obama said and it's a damned cheek.
“There's no way his son would look like Trayvon; but if I had a boy, he would be Trayvon's spitting image.”
When Labour MP Tom Watson suggested that Mr Murdoch already had a son, called James, Mr Murdoch replied mysteriously: “Do I?” before laughing maniacally and flying off through an open window.
The discovery, made by carpenter David Sharp at his bungalow in Gravesend, Kent, means that everything is now fine.
A spokesman for world issues said: “We wish we'd looked there earlier.”
Staff from 18 leading women's weeklies are taking industrial action, in protest at plans to make headlines 15% less misleading, and stories 25% less salacious.
Janet Hopper, a 52-year-old housewife from Kettering, used to read 12 women's magazines a week.
She admits she now resorts to rooting through bins to find scraps of paper which might tell her how to please her man.
Mrs Hopper said: “This strike has had such a crushing effect on me. I wake every morning trying to remember any of the top ten turn-ons for men from the most recent Take A Break.
“I think one tip was to buy him a Scalextric set, but there's no way of knowing for sure.”
Claire Harding, a 37-year-old marketing consultant from Hereford, has gained three and a half stone since the strike began.
“I followed the magazines' diet tips religiously, even when they contradicted each other, like when New! advised eating two apples a day, at the same time as Closer was telling me I'd get ovarian cancer if I so much as touched a Granny Smith.
“Now, I don't know what to eat and drink. Lately I've been eating soot for breakfast, jay cloths for lunch and Febreze for dinner. It's just what I had in the house.”
The Women's Magazine Writers' Union has been criticised for threatening another strike at the height of the summer season, when demand from women for fluffy drivel is at its greatest.
But Heather Robinson, shop steward for the WMWU, defended its position.
She said: “If your doctor went on strike, your headache might last a bit longer, but as this strike has shown, women simply can't do without our magazines.
“Women's magazine writers are the glue that keeps 21st Century Britain together and it's time our entirely reasonable demands were met.”
A team from the Department of Reverse Chronology at Roehampton University surveyed more than 500 directors at FTSE 250 firms, and found that 37% went on to attend either Oxford or Cambridge University 20 or 30 years earlier.
Dr Jennifer Potter, who led the research, said: “This is the first empirical evidence we have to show that the best way of getting into Oxford or Cambridge is to be a rich fatcat in later life.”
Nearly one third of those surveyed (31%) assumed it must have something to do with vegetation, while another quarter said they knew it had something to do with money, but they had no idea what.
The study, by the Institute of Things at King's College, London, also found that 32% of zoologists thought their job meant they'd be feeding gibbons all day, 42% of dermatologists admitted they'd chosen their career to study X Factor and Sky News presenters, and 96% of taxidermists said they'd run off screaming when they discovered they'd be stuffing animals for the rest of their working lives rather than helping people with their finances.
Earlier this week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the British Olympic Association's lifetime ban for drug cheats and announced that athletes would be allowed a maximum of three tonnes of drugs per month.
That decision was welcomed by dishonest, underperforming joggers everywhere, but now the Government's VAT bombshell has had them choking on their javelins.
800-metre discus spinner Clayton Syringe said: “This is an outrageous decision. “Without my daily mix of nandrolone, Erythropoietin and Calpol, I'm so weak that I literally can't hold a paper clip.
“It's the same for most British athletes.
“I know one hurdler who's so slow without drugs, he got a £1200 fine for returning a library book nine years late.
“And he lives down the road from the library.”
Labour MP Fergus Horricks also condemned the VAT move.
He said: “We should be supporting Small and Medium Size Enterprises like Dwain Chambers.
“This punitive measure could drive the likes of Chambers and other drug cheats off to ply their drug-cheating ways in other countries.”
Drugs declined to comment.
