Britain's Queen Elizabeth's Delight At Winning A 50-Pound Supermarket Voucher

London: She has several castles and hundreds of millions of pounds in the bank, but Queen Elizabeth II looked delighted with her winnings from a horse show -- a 50 pounds supermarket voucher.

Photos published Friday from the Royal Windsor Horse Show showed a smiling British monarch, who has a life-long passion for horses, clutching a voucher from retailer Tesco.

Her 14-year-old bay gelding Barber's Shop won first prize in the Tattersalls and RoR Thoroughbred Ridden Show Series Qualifier at the show near her Windsor Castle residence on Thursday.

The voucher may not be worth much financially to a woman who has a personal fortune of 340 million pounds ($490 million, 430 million euros), according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
But the Daily Telegraph reported that the queen burst out laughing when she opened the winner's envelope, which included the gift token and another for a jacket from another retailer.

"She usually distributes her winnings to her trainers, jockeys and others with a hand in her success," the newspaper reported.

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Tesco later offered its congratulations, with a spokesman quoted by the Telegraph as saying: "We hope this win provides a little help with the weekly royal shop."

The latest royal accounts show the queen's household spent 1.3 million pounds on food and drink in 2015 -- the equivalent of 25,000 pounds a week.

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The queen's modest winnings made for some better headlines in Friday's papers than earlier in the week, when the monarch was caught in a rare diplomatic gaffe describing some Chinese officials as "very rude".