FORMER pearly queen Madge Covey, 97, has been awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list – for her services to the Wellington Community.

“I was told I had been given the BEM in June but to remain tightlipped until now,” said Madge who lives in Popham Flats, Wellington.

Madge, who moved to Wellington in 1992 from Southampton where she was a school cook, has lived a very full life.

As a pearly queen, she collected at Wellington Carnival and the Street Fair for many years, regularly raising £200, and was a standard bearer for the Royal British Legion from 1974 to 2010. She has sold poppies from the age of 11.

She was also awarded the Queen’s Medal by the Royal Women’s Voluntary Service (WRVS).

She enjoyed playing skittles and was captain for 20 years of the High Street Blues who played at the Conservative Club.

However, these are strange times, and Madge added: “I don’t go out at the moment.”

Meanwhile, former Wellington School student David Suchet, famous for playing Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, has been knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Born in 1946, Sir David was a boarder at Wellington School and has acknowledged the part played by the English teacher at the school, the late Joe Storr, in encouraging him to act after casting him as Macbeth in a school production.

Sir David said: “I don’t think I would ever have had the confidence and the chance to branch out into drama without Mr Storr’s support.

“When I came to Wellington I found kindness and warmth for the first time. With encouragement and nurture you grow – and that’s what Wellington School did for me.”

As a student he was heavily involved in sport, playing rugby and tennis in teams coached by Mr Storr.