 Elizabeth was well known for her dry witticisms . On hearing that Edwina Mountbatten was buried at sea , she said : " Dear Edwina , she always liked to make a splash . " Accompanied by the gay writer Sir Noël Coward at a gala , she mounted a staircase lined with Guards . Noticing Coward 's eyes flicker momentarily across the soldiers , she murmured to him : " I wouldn 't if I were you , Noël ; they count them before they put them out . " After being advised by a Conservative Minister in the 1970s not to employ homosexuals , the Queen Mother observed that without them , " we 'd have to go self @-@ service " . On the fate of a gift of a nebuchadnezzar of champagne ( 20 bottles ' worth ) even if her family didn 't come for the holidays , she said , " I 'll polish it off myself . " Emine Saner of The Guardian suggests that with a gin and Dubonnet at noon , red wine with lunch , a port and martini at 6 pm and two glasses of champagne at dinner , " a conservative estimate puts the number of alcohol units she drank at 70 a week " . Her extravagant lifestyle amused journalists , particularly when it was revealed she had a multi @-@ million pound overdraft with Coutts Bank . 
