Queen Elizabeth's refusal to cut ribbon exposed after airport shotgun mishap

The late Queen reportedly refused to inaugurate an airport terminal after a relative was prevented from boarding a plane with his firearms on his way to visit her at Balmoral.

Lord Ivar Mountbatten, a first cousin once removed of the late Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, disclosed that he was barred from carrying his shotguns on a flight from Bristol to Aberdeen.

Speaking on Gyles Brandreth's Rosebud podcast, he recounted how a "sweet check-in lady" informed him that the hold was accessible from the cabin and thus his guns would not be secure, despite him telling a manager: "The Queen's sending me a car and she's expecting me for tea."

Eventually, his firearms were stored in the police armoury at the airport and Lord Ivar proceeded to Scotland to join the Queen for a shooting weekend in the Highlands. Later that day at Balmoral, when he narrated the incident to the Queen, it led to her "getting rather irritated" and instructing her equerry to arrange transportation of the guns, according to Lord Ivar.

The aristocrat, who is also a distant cousin of Elizabeth II, told Brandreth: "She said...'I would like Lord Ivar's guns to be up here tomorrow morning. Please see to it'."

He added: "Whereupon she turns back to me and she looks at me over her glasses with a glint in her eye and she says 'They want me to open their new terminal'. She says 'I don't think I will now'."

Lord Ivar concluded: "So every time I go back to Bristol Airport now, it was opened by the Princess Royal, I have a quiet laugh to myself."

Anne initially inaugurated a terminal building at Bristol Airport in 2000, and subsequently unveiled a terminal extension in 2015.

Lord Ivar, whose great-uncle was Earl Mountbatten, made an appearance in the third series of the reality programme The Traitors US this year.