Et Al Pics: Full English Breakfast

Philip Brown visits the far queue

Before nearly every Lord’s Test match I convince myself that it will be worth arriving early and photographing the MCC members queue before ‘it’ enters the ground. The gates are normally opened at 8.30 in the morning so it means getting to Lord’s about 7.15 at the very latest.

To me it’s like a throwback to a different time - a very English scene. Predominately men in their sixties and seventies (and older) line up next to red or very dark brick walls reading newspapers, or chatting, or looking at their phone, or just simply waiting. In fact I don’t really see people reading actual paid for newspapers apart from in that queue outside Lord’s Cricket Ground.

These Marylebone Cricket Club members embrace the traditions of their club to different levels. The vast majority just wear the egg and bacon tie to show their allegiance. Not just the egg and bacon tie you understand, they have other garments on too, I think you get my drift. We plough on …

Occasionally one member goes for what I call the ‘whole hog’. An MCC blazer, the tie, cable kit jumper, socks. Anyway, it can make for good photographs and that’s the main reason I’ll set an alarm one hour earlier than I really need to and head in to NW8.

Over the years I’ve got to know some of the members at the very front of the queue right at the Grace Gates. “What time did you arrive?” I remember asking once. “I came on the 12.10 bus, the last bus of the evening”. So he’d been sitting onside the ground on a fold out chair right through the night.

I’ve taken a few images over the years of the queue I’m fairly pleased with. In 2009 one of the members was having a close shave as he queued in front of the road sign. In 2013 I got a photo of a man ignoring me as he ate his healthy looking breakfast. In 2015 I took a close-up of the uniform and in 2022 snapped a colourful lady waiting in the queue looking a bit perturbed. I try to take my photos without any conversation. Some queuers can be quite grumpy, very occasionally angry so I’ll wear earphones in my ears even if I’m not actually listening to anything. Most queuers are friendly, the ones who ignore me are my favourites.

In 2025 before England played India I ventured out on to St. John’s Wood Road to check out the scene. I came upon a few men lined up and they happened to be spaced out really nicely. I don’t mean ‘spaced out’ as if they’d been on magic mushrooms or ketamine by the way. I mean the distance between them was very similar. So they were neatly lined up with various amounts of MCC gear on. Three just the egg and bacon tie, but one had the load: hat, blazer, tie, handkerchief and branded bag.

It was a tricky image to capture as there was a large concrete block on the right and an ugly brick join on the left. To get the perfect angle and composition where I could lose these two distractions I had to move on to the road. In the middle of the road in fact, with motorised vehicles passing. Of course there were cars, van, trucks and cycles - this is Central London! So I was literally crouched in the middle of St. John’s Wood road trying to get the best photo I could from this opportunity. I took quite a few frames (in 135 seconds, I’ve just checked) of these four men before moving off the road and back to the relative safety of the pavement (or footpath if you prefer).

The image received quite a lot of love on social media and I was really happy with it. A few weeks later I met a lady who said her husband was in the photo. Which one I asked. “The grumpy looking one,” she answered. Like you, I’ve completely no idea either.

2025 photo - Nikon D6 body; 70-200mm lens @ 125mm; f3.2; 1/400th; ISO 500; 7.49am