A slippery, dim-witted schemer who liked to defile young men dressed in ... trends now
He was as bitter as she was sweet. But nobody ever said a word against the Queen Mother's kid brother, David Bowes-Lyon, because she adored him so.
Among all her numerous family, David was her favourite. The brother and sister were the last of ten children born to the 14th Earl of Strathmore - separated from the eldest of their siblings by almost 20 years.
They were the babies of the family, romping together in the sprawling rooms of Glamis Castle while their eldest sister was already preparing for marriage. They could not have been closer.
Some loved David – one description speaks of his 'never-failing sense of humour, genial and kind... and humorous'.
Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon aged four with her younger brother David, then three
The future Queen Elizabeth and Queen mother with younger brother Lord David Bowes-Lyon in 1909
A group portrait taken at the Hertfordshire home of the Earl of Strathmore in 1920. Pictured from the left are Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Lady Elizabeth's mother, Cecilia and brother David Bowes-Lyon seated at the front
But even among his friends Bowes-Lyon was not considered to be a wholly attractive figure.
One of those friends, the politician and diarist Chips Channon, described him as 'slippery' while royal intimate Lady Gina Kennard described him as 'a vicious little fellow'.
So, when his sister rose to the throne in 1936 as Queen Elizabeth, Consort to George VI, David Bowes-Lyon started to trade on his newfound status.
He told royal servant 'Backstairs' Billy Tallon that when she married the future king 'the gates clanged behind her and never opened again' - meaning that he, too, was welcomed into the royal compound, for ever to be above reproach.
Later in life he was knighted, had a successful career as a financier and was a director of The Times.
All these things came his way because of who his sister was, not because of any talent.
One courtier described him as 'a man of extreme right-wing views and a baleful influence at court'.
Though married, he was gay.
In his brilliant biography of the Queen Mother, historian Hugo Vickers recalls the photographer Cecil Beaton spending an all-male weekend at St Paul's Waldenbury, Bowes-Lyon's colossal brick pile in Hertfordshire.
'A young man was bidden to wear football shorts, a sweater and heaving hobnail shoes – in which he subsequently ate his dinner before the long built-up defiling act took place. Where do surprises end?'
The architectural historian James Lees-Milne found himself cornered by Bowes-Lyon who demanded to know whether he felt that women's thighs were ugly and men's figures more aesthetic. Oh, and did he like wearing shorts?
In a later encounter, Lees-Milne records the Queen's brother 'insinuating all sorts of forbidden things in veiled terms and proposing a trip with me in the spring'.
