Your trusted source

When the Queen leaves shortly for her annual break at Balmoral, she will find a collection of recordings of her favourite TV shows waiting for her, The Sun reports.

These will be in the form of DVDs neatly stacked in her private sitting room, and in the past has included her all-time favourite show – The Bill.

Each year the monarch’s private secretary sends a list of the shows she would like to see to the Special Services department at the BBC, which puts together a collection (both from its own output and from the independent channels).

“The Queen likes them in the form of separate discs, although of course it would be easier to transfer them digitally,” says an aide who used to work at the Highlands royal retreat.

“You might call that old-fashioned, but that’s the way she prefers to do her viewing.”

A senior courtier once asked the sovereign her favourite TV show and she promptly replied that it was The Bill.

She added the caveat that she didn't like "those episodes where policemen get hurt".

The courtier adds that Her Majesty was disappointed when ITV ended the series in 2010, after its ratings fell to three million viewers.

It ran for 26 years and was set in Sun Hill, a fictional police station in London's East End.

Actor Paul Nicholls confirms the series was a royal favourite, saying that he knew because he had once been shown the list sent from Buckingham Palace to the BBC.

“I saw that list,” he says. "Besides The Bill there was Keeping Up Appearances, Midsomer Murders, New Tricks, Last Of The Summer Wine and the complete Doctor Who."

The royal viewing selection is one of the traditions of the Queen’s summer break at Balmoral, along with a much older one - started by Queen Victoria - of having a bagpiper play for 15 minutes under HM’s window at 9am every morning.

The Queen’s arrival at her 52,000-acre Scottish estate always begins with an inspection of a guard of honour from the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion, who make up part of her protection while she’s there.