The president appeared on a balcony overlooking the late monarch’s coffin at Westminster Hall, before signing a book of condolences on Sunday. Mr Biden said of Queen Elizabeth: “She was the same in person … as her image: dignified, dignified and all about service. Our hearts go out to the royal family.” Joe Biden and his mother Jean in Chicago on election night, 2008 (Getty Images) Biden was then asked why he had previously said the Queen reminded him of his mother, Catherine Finnegan, who was known as Jean and was of Irish descent. The president told reporters it was “just because of the way he touched when he bent down. It was like “are you okay, can I do anything for you, anything you need?” But also, “make sure you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.” The comparison between the two women is awkward, as it has been reported in the past that Mrs. Finnegan disliked the English so much that she once refused to sleep in a bed that the Queen had slept in. President Biden signs a book of condolences at Lancaster House in London (AP) Georgia Pritchett, a writer and co-producer on the TV comedy Veep, wrote in her autobiography My Mess is a Bit of a Life that she met Biden in the White House when he was Barack Obama’s vice president. He wrote that he was talking to the then-vice president about a trip to Ukraine, which his advisers quickly shut down. “He changed the subject to how much his mother hated the English. His parents were Irish and she had written several poems about her hatred of the English. He went to find them and came back with hundreds of poems describing how God should smite the English and rain blood on our heads,” he wrote, according to the Guardian. And he went on to say how Mr Biden had described how his mother had a problem while staying at a hotel in the UK where the Queen had previously stayed. “She was so terrified that she slept on the floor all night, rather than risk sleeping in a bed in which the Queen had slept,” Ms Pritchett wrote. Biden’s mother died in 2010 and he lived with him after his father’s death in 2002.
