British Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize to Queen Elizabeth for saying she 'purred'
In Britain, it was the hot mic to end all hot mics.
Prime Minister David Cameron, in New York City this week, was caught telling ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg that Queen Elizabeth had positively "purred" when she found out that Scottish voters had chosen to stay with Great Britain in an independence referendum earlier this month.
"The definition of relief, if you are prime minister of the United Kingdom, is ringing up Her Majesty the Queen and saying 'Your Majesty, it is all right, it's O.K.'" Cameron told Bloomberg. "That was something. She purred down the line."
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The weird skeeziness of the comment did not go over well with Her Majesty's subjects. "It's as though the 88-year-old monarch were some moggy whose tummy clever Cameron had tickled until the old thing was beside herself with pleasure," wrote Allison Pearson of The Telegraph. (A moggy is a cat.) Also, Cameron inadvertently acted as a spokesman for the Queen's supposed political views — views that, as a constitutional monarch, she is supposed to refrain from expressing. He now says he will apologize to the Queen personally.
Still, this isn't as embarrassing as that time Cameron tried to play ping pong.
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Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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