The death of the Queen has brought back vivid memories for Punchline editor Mark Owen of the day he prepared a meal for Her Majesty.

It was around 1985 that Mark was serving as a chef in the Royal Air Force, based at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh paid a visit.

"I worked in the officers' mess where the Queen had a meal. I was picked as part of the team to cook for the Queen. I hadn't been in the RAF long but I had been a chef for some time as I had worked in an Italian restaurant for a couple of years.

"We all had to make the camp look really smart and one of the jobs I remember doing before her visit was that I had to paint the kerbs black and white on the route to the actual mess. There was a big patch of grass that was bare and we had to paint the grass green.

The other thing that happened was that we never had enough tongs and it was a real cause of frustration. When we knew the Queen was coming we suddenly had everything we possibly needed. All the crockery and extra equipment was flown in.

"We fed about 200 people, including all the officers and their wives and dignitaries and we actually did the whole meal as a dry run two or three days beforehand. The Group Captain and his wife stood in pretending to be the Queen and the Duke. The only thing we didn't do which we did when the Queen visited was that we didn't peel the grapes for the chicken and white wine and grapes.

I can't remember much about the day as it went by so fast but I do remember working on the pudding and the veg.

After cooking for the Queen in the 1980s, Mark got to meet Her Majesty when she officially opened the new Gloucestershire College in 2013 as part of an official visit which saw her and the Duke sail into Gloucester Docks to see the multi-million pound redevelopment of the Quays before taking lunch at the college.

Mark added: "The Queen shook my hand. It was a great honour to meet her. First time round I never met her because I was in the back of the kitchen.

"I was there as chairman of the Federation of Small Business of Gloucestershire but also I was a director of the Gloucester Heritage Urban Regeneration Company, as well as managing director of Moose Marketing and PR and Punchline."