Whether you agree with the Royal Family, or not, it's difficult not to feel a bit sorry for the one person who, indirectly and directly, has helped keep what little fabric of society remains in Britain together for 60 years - especially when politicians and errant relatives seem hell-bent on perpetrating the occasional right royal balls-up.
If it's not topless pictures in the press, your husband being the King Gaffmeister, one of your young princes flying his 'red arrow' waywardly in hotel-rooms or having to fume at the BBC's latest indiscretion, there's the grisly business of having to sit opposite the elected PM on a regular basis to watch him serve up slices of warm humble pie and the odd fib. (Allegedly). Under a fiercely guarded code of silence, the weekly head-to-head between ruler and leader has been a tradition that has remained within private walls. Until now.
Peter Morgan's version of events will be aired in public for the very first time as part of his drama, The Audience. Using imagination rather than fact, the play will speculate on what meetings between the likes of Churchill, Wilson, Callaghan, Brown and Cameron must have been like. Confessional? Intimate? Embarrassing? Funny? Tetchy? Of course, we'll never really know - The Audience is mere entertainment and folly - but it's nonetheless fascinating to visualize. And it probably isn't anything like the hilarious spoof meeting dreamed up by Chris Morris in The Day Today - John Major and The Queen having a fight, indeed.
Reprising her most recent and infamous role at London's Gielgud Theatre, will be esteemed award-winning actress Helen Mirren, appearing as The Queen. Quite what she will say to Thatcher et al is anyone's guess. It'll be worth a ticket to find out.
The play will run from 15th February to 15th June 2013 and we have tickets to all performances now, priced from £25-£49. There are some limited £10 seats available from 25th February onwards.