TORY MSP Murdo Fraser has lashed out at James Dornan after the SNP MSP made a joke about the Queen’s gold piano.
The monarch’s decision to sit in front of the gilded mahogany instrument while delivering her annual Christmas address has frayed tempers.
She used the broadcast to urge her subjects to come together and be friendlier to other people, even when there are “deeply held differences”.
Dornan jokingly wrote a fake quote online pretending the Queen had said: “So sad all those people going to foodbanks and sleeping on the streets. So to cheer them up I suggest we gather round my gold piano with a rendition of My Old Man’s a Dustman.
“That’ll take their mind off the cold and hunger for a while.
“Do you see how hard being Queen is now?”
The joke infuriated Tory MSP Murdo Fraser: “This is beneath you, James,” he tweeted.
“What a horrible reptile you are Dornan, your lower than a snakes belly,” Allan McKie a former councillor for Oban tweeted.
It wasn’t just Scottish politicians who were riled up by the Christmas Day broadcast, however.
“Nothing says Christmas 2018 like a billionaire sitting in front of a gold piano telling us all to pull together through this difficult time,” wrote Twitter user gavmacn.
Scots comic Janey Godley tweeted: “Queen reminds us that poor people are having it tough as she sits in a room with a gold piano”
JimMFelton tweeted: “The Queen talking about self sacrifice in front of a massive golden piano there.”
Others rushed to her defence, TV host Susana Reid tweeted: “She’s the Queen. She has many palaces. And staff. And have you seen her crown? She’s not ‘one of us’... and yet she brings us all together.”
The Queen’s speech was the most watched TV programme on Tuesday, with 6.4 million tuning in for the address – around 2m more than BBC Scotland’s Mrs Brown’s Boys.
The piano dated back to the reign of Queen Victoria. She and Prince Albert had intended that the elaborately decorated instrument, covered in cherubs and “comical scenes involving monkeys playing musical instruments and making mischief” to be a showpiece for the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace.
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