In what is being hailed as a coup for Google, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II has started her own YouTube channel - the first Royal to do so. She has kicked off the channel by adding her 2007 televised annual address to her subjects and apparently Buckingham Palace is hoping that more younger people will feel connected to the Royal Family as a result.

As a Brit, I am used to sitting down on Christmas Day and watching her televised annual address to the nation. For 15 minutes, we sit and listen to the Monarch tell everyone what a terrible year she’s been having, how she isn’t getting any younger and how we should all appreciate her more in the New Year. The national anthem plays, the old folks get misty-eyed and start talking about Winston Churchill and the war. Then the Queen accidently kicks her Corgi dogs, leaves for a stiff whisky and beats up her son with her handbag, and I start playing my games console again. Ah…..tradition!

But in the past 7 years I haven’t been able to watch the Queen Liz Show because I am now living in Germany and the BBC doesn’t get this far. Not that it was any great loss you understand but I always felt I was missing out on a Christmas British tradition. So this year is the first year I was able to watch the Queen do her thing after logging onto YouTube’s Royal Channel.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of her annual address being televised (prior to 1957, the Monarch’s address was only on the radio). So it seems only fitting that on the 50th anniversary, her traditional speech moves up to a new medium - the internet.

But although you can listen to her on YouTube, she doesn’t want scruffy working-class folks leaving comments so the commenting system on her pages has been disabled.    You filthy poor beggars are also not allowed to dare to embed the videos on your own sites so the embed function has also been rendered useless by Royal Command.

Being in her 80’s, the Queen is remarkably forward-thinking with technology. Last year, her Christmas speech was podcasted for the first time and now she is on YouTube. We can apparently thank her granddaughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who are big Facebook fans, and who explained the YouTube concept to their grandmother (I’m impressed - I wouldn’t even have the nerve to try explaining YouTube to MY grandmother!). She also apparently has a mobile phone, an iPod and has begun emailing people.