Ballot opens for Queen Elizabeth’s birthday bash

A ballot has opened to distribute tickets to Queen Elizabeth’s birthday celebrations.
The royal will turn 90 on April 21 and although tickets for her official 90th Birthday Celebration sold out within hours after going on sale last year, 5,000 passes are up for grabs for an event in Windsor.
The Celebration on The Long Walk will take place on May 15, near Windsor Castle, and culminate in a screening of the Birthday Celebration, a 90-minute spectacular featuring 900 horses and more than 1,500 participants.
It will celebrate the life of the royal, who has reigned as monarch for more than 60 years.
Queen Elizabeth will also celebrate her birthday by hosting a street party for 10,000 people on The Mall near Buckingham Palace, London.
Peter Phillips, who is in charge of the event and also happens to be the Queen’s grandson, said: “I was very conscious to make sure we did this properly, so we went through the normal channels of approaching the Palace.
“We had to show that this wasn’t a case of trying to cut corners because the Queen happens to be my grandmother. I said [to the Queen], ‘Oh, by the way you may or may not have heard that we are having conversations with your office about this’ … She said, ‘I’ve heard you’re up to something.'”
The Mall is set to be filled with a thousand tables, which seats ten people each, whilst ten thousand chairs will have to be placed down the iconic road individually.