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Ginger Spice rose to fame in the mid-90s as a member of the Spice Girls pop group

Queen Camilla chatted with Geri Horner at Buckingham Palace during a reception for her Commonwealth Essay Competition.

The former spice girl, 52, attended the event as a celebrity guest and shared a hug with the 77-year-old Queen.

The Queen said: “Yet again, we have had a record-breaking year, with 35,000 entries from 54 Commonwealth countries, including 11 from Samoa and over 200 from Australia: two places that my husband and I were lucky enough to visit last month.”

“While I was in Sydney, I couldn’t help but think of a young woman named Pamela who, exactly 100 years ago, left that beautiful city to travel to London.”

“She did so when she was only a little older than Evangeline Khoo and, like each one of you here, she loved to write.

“For a decade, she wrote poems, stories and reviews of plays, until from her pen sprang one of the best-loved characters in literature and certainly everybody’s favourite nanny… None other than Mary Poppins, who was and is practically perfect in every way.”

The Queen revealed that she has a copy of the book from the year it was published in 1934 that belong to the Late Queen Elizabeth.

She told the attendees: “In a moment, you can all have a look at.”

Camilla complemented all the finalists on the “amazing journeys” they took their audiences on and dubbed the contestants as “utterly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

Camilla smiled as she posed with finalists and celebrity guests, including Geri Horner, Richard Ayoade and actor Toby Stephens.

She added: “Your readers are taken on amazing journeys with you across the Commonwealth, from Gambia to Grenada, from Bangladesh to Botswana, from Malta to Malaysia.”

You make us part of your story; you invite us to share your concerns and your passions; and you eloquently express the power of Our Common Wealth.”

Queen Camilla was presented with an Honorary Doctor of Literature by the Princess Royal at the University of London on Wednesday evening earlier this week.

She was one of five receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the University’s Chancellor, the Princess Anne, to mark the University of London’s Foundation Day.