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Boris Johnson halted BBC interview about Queen's death because he was 'so overcome with emotion'

Boris Johnson has revealed he once had to ask a BBC crew to leave after becoming "overcome with sadness" while talking about the Queen's death.

The former prime minister – who tendered his resignation to Her Majesty two days before her death – said he was overwhelmed when asked to imagine her demise for a pre-recorded interview to be played in the event of her death.

Speaking in the House of Commons, he told gathered MPs: "I hope the House will not mind if I begin with a personal confession.

“A few months ago the BBC came to see me to talk about Her Majesty the Queen, and we sat down, the cameras started rolling, and they requested that I should talk about her in the past tense.

“I am afraid I simply choked up and I couldn’t go on. I am really not easily moved to tears, but I was so overcome with sadness that I had to ask them to go away."

Johnson was the Queen's 14th prime minister, and visited her on Tuesday as he made way for Liz Truss to succeed him as prime minister.

Read more: Queen’s coffin to lie in state in keeping with historic tradition

Boris Johnson has said he had to postpone a BBC interview after becoming overcome at the thought of the Queen dying. (Parliament)
Boris Johnson has said he had to postpone a BBC interview after becoming overcome at the thought of the Queen dying. (Parliament)
File photo dated 24/7/2019 of Queen Elizabeth II welcoming the newly-elected leader of the Conservative party Boris Johnson during an audience in Buckingham Palace, London, where she invited him to become Prime Minister and form a new government. The Queen saw 13 Prime Ministers come and go during her reign - with Boris Johnson as the 14th. Issue date: Thursday September 8, 2022.
The Queen pictured meeting with Boris Johnson in 2019. (PA)

Just two days later, she died, leaving the nation mourning their monarch of over 70 years.

Summing up the mood of the nation, Johnson continued: "I think millions of us are trying to understand why we are feeling this deep, personal and familial sense of loss.

"Perhaps it's that she's always been there, a changeless human reference point in British life, the person who all the surveys say appears most often in our dreams.

"So unvarying in her pollster radiance that we had perhaps been lulled into thinking that she might be in some way eternal.

"But I think our shock is keener today because we are coming to understand in her death the full magnitude of what she did for us all and think of what we asked that 25-year-old woman all those years ago

"To be the person so globally trusted that her image should be on every unit of our currency, every postage stamp, the person in whose name all justice is dispensed in this country, every law passed, to whom every minister of the crown swears allegiance and for whom every member of our armed services is pledged if necessary to lay down their lives for."