William Lloyd Williams, 49, from Machynlleth in western Wales, went to the sovereign's Buckingham Palace official residence in London to receive his Member of the Order of the British Empire medal for services to the meat industry.

The butcher shed his hat and apron for the ceremony but couldn't bear to be without a ballpoint pen.

"It's a trait with butchers," he told BBC television.

"A carpenter will have a pencil but I've always seemed to have a biro and the one time that I didn't have a biro when I needed it was when I got married."

He said more than 30 of the 100-odd guests waiting to collect awards came over to tell him he had a pen stuck behind his ear.

"I said the queen might want a turkey so I'll need to know what size she wants."

Williams' meat has won a string of awards.

"The queen did look and she smiled," the Daily Mail newspaper quoted him as saying.

"I was accepting the award on behalf of the old-fashioned butcher and as far as I'm concerned a pen is the symbol of your independent local butcher."

Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium