Bancroft's School pupil Lorcan Murphy, 18 (third from the Queen's left) captured on TV during the monarch's Diamond Jubilee lunch

While thousands waited on Tuesday to catch a glimpse of The Queen from Buckingham Palace’s balcony, a Woodford Green student was lunching with the monarch.

Lorcan Murphy, 18, of Bancroft’s School, High Road, Woodford Green, was chosen for a place at the Queen’s table during a lavish Diamond Jubilee lunch.

He was picked as the best scholar of the Drapers’ Company, one of the livery companies of trades and associations who organised the lunch at Westminster Hall.

While Redbridge residents were tucking into sausages and burgers from street party barbecues, the student was enjoying food he said could “easily have passed for Michelin starred”.

Lorcan, who hopes to study engineering at Cambridge University in September, dined on produce exclusively sourced from the UK including Lyme Bay crab and Welsh lamb.

While chatting to fellow guests including the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, and Lord Cholmondeley, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the 18-year-old also enjoyed apples direct from the Queen’s Sandringham estate.

He said: “It was a great honour not only to attend the lunch but to have been selected to have been seated at Her Majesty’s table, and it is a memory that I will never forget.”

As a regimental sergeant major in the school’s combined cadet force, Lorcan said he enjoyed speaking to Captain Edward Addington of the Rifles Battalion, also seated at the table.

Captain Addington was injured by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan and received some of his treatment from the “Swift and Bold” Appeal, a charity which the school’s cadet force supports.

Karen Rogers, the school’s marketing officer, said: “Francis Bancroft, the founder of Bancroft’s School, was a member of the Drapers’ Company and the school still enjoys a very strong relationship and support from this livery company.”