The chain-smoking Queen Margrethe of Denmark, who has been cruelly dubbed the “Ashtray Queen”, has bowed to public opinion and decided to stop smoking in public.

The move will disappoint those Danes who saw the 66-year-old monarch as one of the last bastions against political correctness. But with a new law banning smoking in public buildings soon to come into effect, the Queen had little choice.

“You will not see the Queen smoking in public any more,” Lis Frederiksen, the Danish court spokeswoman, said yesterday.

Although the Queen was frequently criticised by anti-smoking campaigners, she had the press on her side. The other great Scandinavian smoking monarch is Carl Gustav of Sweden, although he has been hiding his packets and cigarette butts for years.

The Danes — always sceptical of their larger neighbour — mocked the Swedish King’s apparent hypocrisy. “Is it a sign of responsibility for the Swedish King to slip off to the toilets to have a drag on the sly?” one Danish tabloid commentator asked.

By contrast, when Queen Margrethe was asked about her smoking problem, she replied crisply, “I have no problem” — before promptly lighting up.

She also shrugged off criticism when she was seen lighting up in front of asthmatic pensioners at an old people’s home.

However, Queen Margrethe has finally fallen into line. When she visited Copenhagen University last week she did not once reach for the cigarette case in her handbag.

When the law comes into effect next April, court employees also will have to kick the habit, or at least smoke at home. Apparently the Queen, despite still smoking in private corners of her palaces, wants to show solidarity with her courtiers.

The Royal Family is only just recovering from a brush with angry animal rights activists. Queen Margrethe’s husband, the French-born Prince Hendrik, confessed to liking the taste of fried and grilled dog, acquired during his years in Asia.

Plainly the Queen does not want to fall foul of the anti-smoking organisations at a time when 1,000 Danes a year die from passive smoking, according to the Danish Lung Association. About 25 per cent of Danes over the age of 13 smoke daily.

The tall blonde monarch, educated in Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Paris, has established a reputation as a graphic and costume designer.

Her latest project, for a performance in the Tivoli Park in Copenhagen, is to design the ballet costumes for Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Tinder Box.

Royal roll-ups

Princess Margaret lit up the party circuit as a teenager with her glamorous tortoiseshell cigarette holder and was allegedly smoking 30 a day within months of a 1985 biopsy all-clear verdict

Sources: National Maritime Museum, University of Texas, Action on Smoking and Health, Tobacco.org

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