Claire Trevett: Chit-chat with royalty shows benefits of being a colonial clot

My first real-life glimpse of the Queen was when I was changing my clothes in the parking lot outside the gates of Balmoral Castle in 2013.

It was the end of summer in Scotland and the start of my two-day career as a royal photographer. The Queen was hosting Prime Minister John Key and his family for the weekend. In a very rare concession, the palace let two of the Kiwi media with him in to take footage of his grand arrival and meeting with the Queen.

As we hastily shed travelling clothes and replaced them with clothes more befitting of a royal residence, a convoy of Range Rovers rattled past. We looked up and there was the Queen driving the first of them, followed by Prince Philip and Prince William. The police arrived soon after. If anyone stops outside Balmoral for more than a minute while the Queen is in residence the police will soon pull up.

The next day we were taken to Balmoral again for the start of the Queen's meeting with Key in her study. I was more excited about meeting the corgis but there was no sign of them so we had to settle for the Queen.

We were told she might or might not talk to us. As it happened, she was in a chatty mood and launched into a rather delightful exchange. Alas, more protocol insists her chit-chat should not go further than that room. Suffice it to say, I no longer cared that the corgis were absent. The photo ran far and wide. It led to Key being called a "colonial clot" by the Daily Mail which assumed he had released it against protocol. Since then I have covered two of Prince William's trips to New Zealand and that of Prince Harry.

On each trip the Sun's royal photographer Arthur Edwards, almost as much of an institution as the Queen herself, has had a good-natured gripe about how a Kiwi journalist had made it into the one royal residence he had never been allowed into. There are benefits in being a colonial clot.