Queen Elizabeth
© Leon Neal/AFP/GettyImages
The new Queen robot or 'RoboQueen' made a convincing debut in public yesterday with a visit to church at Sandringham.

The appearance was delayed by two weeks after bugs in the RoboQueen's software caused her to make obscene gestures whenever she saw a swan, proving calamitous at breakfast.

"It went well. Very well," said lead designer of the RoboQueen, Dr Eleanor Gay.

"We surveyed the credulous simpletons who line the street to stare at her and the majority were convinced it was the Queen and not a soulless, uncaring automaton."

The RoboQueen is the beginning of an ambitious project to replace the entire royal family with robots so that the real royals can spend their time shooting animals and doing Ali G impressions.

Simon Williams witnessed the RoboQueen.

"Really convincing. I'd never have guessed it was a robot," he declared.

However, as he is the sort of person who stands in a road to look at an old lady going to church, his judgement is questionable.

He was supportive of the RoboRoyal program, though.

"Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, they have a hard life with all that waving and going on State visits to the Caribbean.

"Why not get robots to do the boring bits, like going to church or meeting that Prime Minister and that."

It is understood that instead of attending church, the Queen spent Sunday morning lying on her sofa with a family bag of Maltesers on her chest watching 'Jenny Bond's 100 funniest Glorious Goodwood bloopers.'