Tattooed Queen on pub sign angers villagers

A pub sign which depicts "the Queen" with a tattoo has provoked an angry response from some villagers in rural Northumberland. The cartoon-style image hangs outside the newly-refurbished Queen's Arms pub in Acomb, near Hexham. Acomb Parish Council chairman Major Charles Enderby described the sign as "most distasteful and inappropriate".

But owner David Crawford-Emery claimed the image was based on his mother, who he said "looked like the Queen". The sign shows a woman resembling the Queen smiling, with what appears to be Buckingham Palace in the background, her arms folded with a tattoo of the name Phil on one of them. Northumberland County Council has admitted a number of complaints have been made about the sign. But a spokesman said that as it replaced an existing sign, planning consent was not required.



Mr Crawford-Emery, who commissioned the sign, said: "I wanted something that said at a glance that it was something just a little bit different. "There is a remarkable similarity to the Queen, but then my mum looked like her. She was born in the same year and brought up in the same generation. It's just a cartoon. It's not a photograph of anybody."

Maj Enderby, who is former member of the Queen's ceremonial guard, said: "I think this is inappropriate for a village like Acomb and indeed inappropriate anywhere. The Queen is our monarch and a wonderful monarch and to have something so undignified I find difficult to take. A woman with bare arms and tattoos has nothing to do with the Queen. She is the most dignified of people and this is not a dignified portrayal of her."