Following the sad news of the death of Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday I’ve found myself watching YouTube videos and reading articles about her.
For some strange and random reason I just Googled, “what was the Queen’s favourite film” and I was surprised to find Google’s answer was the 1980 classic, Flash Gordon!
I did some more Googling and found that the story behind this revelation goes back to when Brian Blessed received his OBE from her majesty in 2016.
He said that everywhere he goes, fans of the film approach him and ask him to recite the line, “Gordon's alive!”
He continued, “The Queen, it’s her favourite film, she watches it with her grandchildren every Christmas.”
According to Blessed in an interview with Yahoo Movies, the Queen said, “You know, we watch Flash Gordon all the time, me and the grandchildren. And if you don’t mind, I’ve got the grandchildren here, would you mind saying ‘Gordon’s alive’?”
Whether this happened at the ceremony or at another meeting is unclear, as is whether Flash Gordon was in fact the Queen’s favourite film. Either way I thought it was pretty cool.
It’s kind of poetic too that the movie’s soundtrack was written by the British rock band Queen.