THE Queen as a feminist seems unlikely but there were attempts to recruit her to the ranks recently.

As MPs at a reception debated whether women should choose between home and Parliament or whether Westminster should adapt to family life, Her Majesty was heard to point out that she hadn't had the choice. She couldn't have given up her job to look after the children. On the strength of that, she was assigned to the feminist ranks.

Somehow, I don't think it was a rebuke from someone who felt she'd managed to keep all the balls in the air successfully. Risking the Tower, I'll suggest HM was actually thinking that the chance would have been a fine thing.

At least, however, she was forewarned. The Queen Mother, who celebrates her hundredth birthday today, was not. She became Duchess of York on her wedding day, reasonably expecting to stay that way. There would certainly be a public element to life; events to open, charities to support and, sometimes, more senior members of the heirarchy to represent, but it wouldn't be an every day job.

Even when the Prince of Wales began his relationship with Mrs Simpson, it was unthinkable that he would put it before his position as king.

It's hard today to realise just how seriously that generation regarded divorce. Good heavens, ordinary middle class people didn't invite the divorced to dinner, never mind heirs to the throne wanting to marry one. Even in the 1940s, after the turmoil into which war threw many marriages, the word was whispered and not in front of the children (I was sitting unnoticed under the table when I heard Cousin X was divorced).

It's even harder to believe no newspaper wanted to be first to break the story of the relationship with Wallis Simpson.

But that's the way it was.

Maybe, right up to the last knockings, the Yorks hoped the King would "do the right thing". Choice didn't come into it after the abdication. The Yorks were pitchforked into the roles of King and Queen and if they didn't like it, they'd better not show they were lumping it.

We'll never know, anyway. "The Little Duchess" gave her first, last and only press interview shortly after her marriage. Anything else is speculation.

Yes, it's been a very privileged life. Yes, it is easier to make your century when you're sure of top rank health care and no waiting list. No, I wouldn't have wanted it and nor, I suspect would many of us.

Open this, visit that, attend a premire (worse, a command performance), tour abroad, eat dinners you don't want with people who bore you out of your skull. Keep smiling and waving and chatting even if rigor mortis feels half an hour away. Day in, day out. No wonder the solitude of fishing appealed on holiday.

I'm grateful our heads of state have no choice; the results of the alternative can be shuddered at worldwide.

Thank you, Ma'am, and happy birthday