EAST Lancashire MP Peter Pike has told how he first saw the Queen Mother as a schoolboy and how even then he realised it was her simplicity and friendliness that made her special.

The Labour backbencher was among a group of pupils from Abel Street Primary School, Burnley, who saw her and her husband King George VI when they visited Burnley just as World War Two was ending.

Now MP for the town, Mr Pike said he was impressed even then by her charm and openness when he spoke during the House of Commons special session to pay tribute to the Queen Mother.

He echoed Prime Minister Tony Blair's view that it was her personality not her rank that made her special.

At the time Mr Pike had been evacuated to his grandmother's house in Burnley after his home in London was bombed.

While most of the speakers in the debate came from places with special connections with the late Queen Mother, Mr Pike said he was representing the rest of the country which, despite the lack of historic or geographical ties, loved her just as much.

And he recalled how when secretary of Manchester Labour Party some 25 years after the war, the Queen Mother had visited the city.

He said: "She spoke to us all in small groups and as she spoke to the group she made you think she was talking individually to each one in it." "At the end of the dinner in her honour she suddenly and enexpectedly pushed back her chair and toasted the city of Manchester.

"It made everybody there, even hardened republicans, warm to her.

"It was the simple things about her that made people love her."