Since her death last Thursday, King Charles III has been lavish in his praise for his "beloved" mother's life of "selfless duty". 

But the new monarch could have added another quality to the list attributed to Queen Elizabeth II - her sense of humour.

Royal protocol may have kept the monarch's humour largely out of the public domain. 

But behind the scenes, the queen was well known to be highly amusing and a good mimic, with a dry wit and an ability to send herself up.

Paddington and 007

In June for her platinum jubilee, the queen took part in a comedy sketch - shown during the concert outside Buckingham Palace - in which she has tea with Paddington Bear, with predictably chaotic results.

Paddington drinks from the teapot, loses his balance and sends food flying before retrieving a marmalade sandwich from his hat and offering it to Elizabeth. 

With perfect comic timing, the monarch reveals she too has one. "I keep mine in here," she says, reaching into her handbag. "For later!" she adds, before tapping a teaspoon on her china cup in time to the opening bars of Queen's "We Will Rock You".

It followed the equally successful sequence she filmed with James Bond actor Daniel Craig for the opening ceremony of London's 2012 Olympic Games in which she appears to skydive into the stadium from a helicopter.

Clips of both sketches have been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

She was "very funny, very funny", Craig recalled last week on US television hours after the queen's death, adding how the queen then "cracked a joke about me".

"Oh no, he's the one that doesn't smile," she quipped as they were having their photograph taken, he said.

Trudeau and Bush

In 2015, an exchange with the famously fresh-faced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prompted laughter too.

Paying tribute to her at a Commonwealth banquet in Malta, Trudeau explained that she had first featured on a Canadian stamp in 1935 and that he was the 12th Canadian premier that she had known.

A smiling monarch replied: "Thank you Mr Prime Minister of Canada, for making me feel so old."  

Nor did former US president George Bush escape her wit.

Getting in a muddle while welcoming her to the White House in 2007, he declared she had come to the United States for the bicentennial in 1776 instead of 1976.

The next day, proposing a toast to the president at a dinner at the British ambassador's residence, she told him: "I was wondering if I should start this toast by saying 'when I came here in 1776'."

Open mic

Open mics can be the bane of public figures, but for the queen an incident during a family photo at the G7 in Cornwall in June 2021, only served to show her at her most jovial and amusing despite the ongoing pandemic.

As the socially distanced leaders posed for the photo, the queen called out: "Are you supposed to be looking as if you're enjoying yourself?"

The queen was famously discreet for a woman who had met and been confided in by so many world leaders - a quality that served to make her pithy observations all the more amusing.

After meeting democracy hero Lech Walesa, she told an aide the Polish president only had two words in English. She paused before adding: "They are quite interesting words." 

More recently, even despite her ongoing health problems, the queen was still able to see the funny side of life.

At a reception on the royal's Sandringham estate on the eve of the 70th anniversary of her reign, she was invited to cut a cake.

On being informed that the design on top was upside down so that the press could photograph it, she replied to laughter "I don't mind, I don't matter", adding: "I can probably read it upside down too."

Among the most famous anecdotes is one related by former royal protection officer Richard Griffin who was with her when she bumped into a couple of American hikers on a walk on her huge Balmoral estate in Scotland.

The man, who failed to recognise the sovereign, proceeded to ask her where she lived, to which she replied that she lived in London but had a holiday home nearby and had been visiting regularly for 80 years.

"You must have met the queen," he told her. "I haven't but Dick meets her regularly," the queen replied before agreeing to pose for a photograph with them.

"I'd love to be a fly on the wall when he shows those photographs to his friends in America," she said.