Bruno Peek.Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Images/Getty
Queen Elizabethis the guest of honor at next month’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, and there’s one man who is tasked with helping her get the party started!
Bruno Peek, the Queen’s beacon pageant master, is on duty for his third Jubilee (he also participated in her Golden and Diamond Jubilees!). Peek, 70, is coordinating the internationalbeacon-lighting ceremonyacross the Commonwealth in tribute to the monarch’s 70 years on the throne.
“She’s our country, our nation, and our Commonwealth, and I believe she’s the person that everybody really looks up to,” Peek tells PEOPLE of how the Queen is viewed across the world. “She’s got such continuity.”
“She’s just got that humility. She knows it’s not about her. She knows it’s about — this is my humble opinion — about her position and the responsibility she’s got. I mean, responsibility, even now at her age must be phenomenal,” he continues.
“When I saw her sitting in that chapel on her own atPrince Philip’s funeral, I think the world must have thought that’s what you call a leader. That’s what you call a woman of substance.”
On that first day, beacon master Peek comes into his own. Torches and beacons will be lit, starting with the Pacific nation of Tonga and New Zealand, before heading west through the various time zones across the Commonwealth until they reach the U.K., where the Queen will be feted.
“We will get this lovely effect coming across the world,” Peek says.
“It’s a symbol. The one thing about beacons is that you can bring people of all ages, all nationalities, all religions — it doesn’t matter who you are you can bring them together at one moment in time to celebrate an important anniversary,” Peek says. “That’s why they’ve always been successful in Jubilees.”
Hundreds of years ago, beacons were initially used to send messages around the U.K. to warn of invasion, and intriguingly, they were used during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
“That’s when they started to be used for celebrations,” Peek adds.
During the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Peek recalls the Queen leaving the stage as fireworks lit up the sky and comparing the noise to wartime, underscoring the history she has lived and served through.
“As I walked off stage that night, the fireworks were going on and she looked at me and she gave me this lovely smile,” Peek recalls. “And she said, ‘Do you know what it reminds me — it is the Blitz all over again.'”
But as they set off the beacon in the Mall in London, things didn’t go exactly as planned, which is something the royals seem to enjoy as they’ve become accustomed to clockwork perfection.Queen Elizabethdropped a diamond into a hole to trigger a motor that then worked the ignition for the flame.
“Once the diamond went down, it should have stopped when it lit the beacon. As I walked her off, she looked at me again with a lovely smile. And she said, ‘It’s still going ‘round, you know.’ The diamond should have stopped, but the motor must have got stuck and it was still turning it around,” he says.
Bruno Peek.Geoff Caddick/PA Images/Getty
Peek, who is a former welder (he’s also been a baker, butcher and a builder’s laborer!), organizes the entire thing together from his home in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, where he lives with his wife, Moira.
“I still get excited when a beacon comes in,” he shares.
Accompanying many outdoor festivals (including in the U.S.) will be bands of pipers playing a newly-created piece “Diu Regnare.”
In the U.K., Grammy-winning American singer Gregory Porter is going to lead the singing of “A Life Lived with Grace” at one of the main beacons.
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Queen Elizabeth.PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo
And it will be difficult when the week is over as it marks another record for the Queen he serves.
“I don’t mind admitting, I’m gonna shed a few tears that night,” Peek says.
It’s unlikely there will be another Jubilee for generations.
“She’s very caring, very understanding, very polite. And she makes you feel very welcome when you’re in her presence. And I just feel that, sadly, when she leaves this earth, there’s gonna be a big hole.”
As for what the Queen must be feeling as she prepares for the huge celebration in her honor, Peek says: “She must feel an element of — not pride, but how can you ever not think this is amazing?”
source: people.com
