Rhodes spills the beans on Queen

She has only a tiny appetite but enjoys plain food such as lamb cutlets and roast beef, with bread- and-butter pudding or ice cream to follow.

She dislikes spicy dishes and avoids tomatoes because, apparently, the pips get stuck in her teeth.

And she hates food to be thrown away - insisting that leftovers from the Sunday roast are recycled during the week to be made into cottage pies and rissoles.

Courtesy of former royal footman Gary Rhodes, these are some of the secrets of the Queen's frugal but very British eating habits.

TV chef Rhodes, now 44, is one of the celebrity interviewees in All The Queen's Cooks, a documentary to be shown on BBC1 next Tuesday.

He was a teenage catering student when he was summoned to work as a footman for functions at Buckingham

Palace. According to Radio Times, it was a terrifying experience. The first house rule, he was informed, was never to look at Her Majesty.

'How can you not look at her?' he asked. 'She's the Queen. The problem was that she happened to glance at me when I was having a sneaky look at her. Bang! We made eye contact. I thought I was going to get fired.'

Rhodes said he was amazed at how little the Royal Family eat. 'There was hardly anything on their plates. I wanted to say, "Go on, get stuck in", but of course you couldn't speak. In fact, you weren't allowed to sneeze, cough, scratch your nose ... nothing.'

The chef also revealed that waiting on the royal table was controlled by a system of traffic lights in the corridors.

They showed red when the Queen was in the vicinity. 'I think they were to ensure no one bumped into the Royal Family,' said Rhodes.

The programme says that, like many of her subjects, taking afternoon tea is one of the Queen's favourite institutions.

She likes her tea, a special royal blend, strong with a few drops of milk. There are also scones, potted shrimps and thin cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

She is also partial to an aperitif - preferring a dry martini, shaken not stirred, with a twist of lemon rind.

When it comes to dinner, the royal table must be set with precision with the cutlery laid out and measured with rulers. Setting a table for 12 can take up to three hours, says the programme.

This is not, of course, the first glimpse into the palace domestic arrangements. Last year an undercover reporter, with a camera, spent two months as a royal footman.

Pictures of the first-floor dining room at Buckingham Palace showed the breakfast table set out with Tupperware containers for the Queen's cornflakes or porridge oats.

Also laid out for Her Majesty's pleasure as she listened to the radio with Prince Philip were pots of Waitrose natural yogurt, costing 31p, along with a selection of marmalade, maple syrup and honey.