(Image source from: Did she really touch the Queen?})

A shop manager is under fire for apparently having touched Her Majesty while guiding her into her family-run seaside fish market.

As per the centuries-old protocol, “the Queen should not be touched in any way beyond a polite handshake.”

Remember the furore that former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating create after he touched the Queen with his arm as he attempted to guide her through the crowd years back in 1992?

Even when former Canadian cycling champion Louis Garneau casually placed his arm around the Queen’s shoulders for photograph, veteran courtiers were seemingly annoyed.

But then, even while her aides seem to mind such breach of protocol, the Queen is quite cool about it.

The 37-year-old shop girl Kerry Bickerstaff insist hers was only an “instinctive and caring gesture as she shepherded the Queen, 87, along the street.”

‘She crooked her arm round behind her back as is natural and anyone would - and she didn’t touch the Queen,’ said one.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: ‘She did not touch the Queen, and even if she had done the Queen would have taken no offence.’

“Indeed, the Queen accepts that people do get excited when they meet her – and it is her aides who are much more likely to raise eyebrows when such 'rules' are breached,” he said.

How queenly of the Queen, indeed!

AW: Suchorita Dutta Choudhury