David Beckham paid subtle tribute to his ‘royalist’ grandfather as he visited Queen’s coffin

David Beckham has been praised widely for turning down an offer to skip the queue to visit Queen Elizabeth’s coffin on Friday.

The former professional footballer waited for 13 hours in the line to pay his respects to the late monarch, outside Westminster Hall.

He joined fellow mourners, who walked for miles to pay their final respects to the late Queen, who died last week at the age of 96.

It has been recently revealed that the 47-year-old England captain was offered the opportunity to pay his respects to the late monarch as a guest of an MP.

MPs and the members of the House of Lords are given special option to skip the public queue and can bring up to four guests with them – a privilege that has been slammed by members of the public as ‘elitist’ and ‘unfair.’

According to the Daily Mail report, Beckham declined the offer to bypass the queue. “David could have avoided all of the queuing but he wanted to be like everyone else. He said his granddad – who was a royalist - wouldn’t have [jumped the queue] so neither would he,” the outlet quoted a source.

“He had been wondering all week when the best time to go [was] and finally he went for this morning,” the source further added.

Beckham was awarded an OBE by the late Queen in 2003 and brought his grandparents to the ceremony because they “were the ones that really brought me up to be a huge royalist and a fan of the royal family”, he told reporters while in the queue.

While speaking to BBC News as he stood in the queue from 2am, Beckham shared that he and the members of the public got through the night on a diet of “Pringles, sherbet lemons, sandwiches, coffee and doughnuts.”

“We all want to be here together. We all want to experience something where we celebrate the amazing life of our Queen and I think something like this today is meant to be shared together,” he said, while wearing a smart suit and a flat cap.