The Queen is a fan of the absurdist play Waiting For Godot, according to veteran actor Peter Sallis.

The 89-year-old star, voice of Wallace in the animated Wallace And Gromit films, said the Queen told him how much she enjoyed the Samuel Beckett play when he received his OBE at Buckingham Palace.

He told the Radio Times: “I was tickled pink. The Queen has something to say to everyone. And as she was sticking the medal on me, she said: “I love Last Of The Summer Wine. And Waiting For Godot”. That was all she said. But it was enough, you know. I’ve been lucky, very lucky.”

It first emerged that the Queen was a fan of Last Of The Summer Wine, which ends this week, after she is said to have told one of its stars, the late Dame Thora Hird, how much she enjoyed the programme.

Irish-born dramatist Beckett’s play Waiting For Godot, which features two tramps Estragon and Vladimir waiting for the mysterious Godot, shocked much of its audience when it first arrived on the London stage more than 50 years ago.

Mr Beckett first penned Waiting For Godot – which has been called the most famous of the “absurdist” plays for its absence of traditional plot and characters – in French in 1948 before he translated it into English.

It features two men clowning around, joking, arguing and repeating themselves as they wait for Godot. Stars who appeared in the play over the years included Mr Sallis, as well as, more recently, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart.

Last Of The Summer Wine is coming to a close this Sunday after 37 years and 31 series, when BBC1 screens the last ever episode.

Mr Sallis, who received an OBE in 2007, said of his Last Of The Summer Wine character: “If you say Clegg is a philosopher, well, I won’t go against it. But when you are on set and there’s a knock on the door, you don’t think, ‘I’m going to do this philosophically’. You just open the door and say the lines.”