A Cork fishmonger who struck up a friendship with Queen Elizabeth II has described the late monarch as "down to earth" with "a great sense of humour".

Pat O'Connell, who works in Cork's famous English Market, met the Queen during her monumental visit to Ireland 11 years ago.

Mr O'Connell told Down to Business about the experience and the friendship that followed.

Recounting the day of the meeting, he said he had "a long wait" for her majesty, having been in the Market since seven o'clock that morning.

"It was about three o'clock when she actually arrived so obviously the nerves were pretty frayed by the time she came."

"What we had in common was going to be a difficult one, but once she arrived it became very obvious in that meeting she was very down to earth."

'A great sense of humour'

He said the Queen had "a great sense of humour" which was evident in her response to a joke he cracked to "break the ice".

He commented that Corkonians refer to the monkfish as "the mother in law" of fish as it "isn't the prettiest fish in the sea".

The Queen clearly found it humorous as, extraordinarily, that was not Mr O'Connell's last interaction with her.

"It was a really sad day when she died."

Since that first meeting, the pair wrote letters to each other regularly until quite recently.

"It's a real strange combination in the sense that you don't expect something like that to last", he said.

"It's been a really nice interaction, I'll be honest about it."

"It was a really sad day when she died."

Good for business

From a business perspective, the well-known friendship didn't do Mr O'Connell any harm either.

He said the Queen's visit was "the icing on the cake" of years of hard work to improve the market.

"It kind of made Cork people say: God, we have something really special here that the Queen of England wants tot see it."

Listen back to the full conversation here.