Contents of Queen's handbag revealed: including £5 for church collection Bedell Smith, writing in The Lady magazine, disclosed that the handbag usually contains reading glasses, mint lozenges and a fountain pen, although rarely cash, except for the "precisely folded" £5 or £10 note on Sundays. A dinner guest at the Berkshire home of Jean Wills, the Queen's cousin, is said to have been surprised to see the Queen spitting into a plastic suction cup before attaching the hook under the table. "I watched the Queen open her handbag and remove a white suction cup and discreetly spit into it," the guest is quoted as saying. The Queen then attached the cup to the underside of the table. The cup had a hook on it, and she attached her handbag to it. Bedell Smith alleges that the most important items in the Queen's bag are a small mirror and lipstick which she has been known to apply whilst still sitting at the table. "At the end of a luncheon or a dinner, even a banquet set with silver gilt and antique porcelain, she has the somewhat outré habit of opening her bag, pulling out a compact and reapplying her lipstick," she writes. "When First Lady Laura Bush made a similar cosmetic fix during a Washington ladies" luncheon, she cheerily commented, "The Queen told me it was all right to do it."" The biographer claims that ladies-in-waiting are responsible for carrying necessities such as extra pairs of gloves, needles, thread and safety pins for emergency repairs However, one long-serving member of staff described the Queen as "a very practical, down-to-earth lady." "She needs a comb or lipstick or Kleenex, and if she hasn't got it, what does she do?" she said. The Queen's handbag has often been described as her "comfort blanket." She has been said to use it to indicate to subtlety communicate with her staff. The bag was even the subject of a book, What's In The Queen's Handbag And Other Royal Secrets by Phil Dampier, which said it included a collection of good-luck charms given to her by her children, plus family photographs and a make-up case, given to her by the Duke of Edinburgh.