Ma'am

A school in London was preparing for a royal visit when an exasperated teacher said to one of the boys, “No, no, no, boy! It’s ma’am as in marmalade not ma’am as in jam’  Hearing that, I immediately got ideas for a painting. Why I painted the Queen Mother against the unlikely backdrop of L.S. Lowry’s home town of Southport I do not recall, but I did. Years later someone who had been working on the movie ‘The Queen’ saw my painting and told me that both the teacher and I had got the words the wrong way round. The actor had been told time and again on his film set to make sure he said Ma’am as in jam.