I SPENT the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in a New York police station. It’s not as cool as it sounds. My purse had been stolen in a bar (one too many Cosmopolitans, I was easy pickings) and I needed a crime number for the insurance.

The police station was like Hill Street Blues - but instead of calling “Be careful out there” the desk sergeant asked: “Why aren’t you with your Queen in London?” We shrugged, having barely given a thought to the Golden Jubilee shindig back home, where Brian May was cranking up his guitar on Buckingham Palace roof. It meant more to an NYPD cop, who’d never even been to the UK, than it did to us.

All I recall of the Diamond Jubilee, a decade later, was watching the concert on the Mall on telly, thinking that surely the Queen would rather be pottering around the stables in her headscarf than sitting through a line-up that included JLS, Atomic Kitten and Rolf Harris.

And back in the summer of 77 I spent the Silver Jubilee in a hospital children’s ward, where my brother spent three months with a broken femur in traction. The nurses hung Union Jack bunting on the kids’ beds and wheeled them outside for a ‘street party’.

This time though, it feels different. We are the first generations ever to witness a monarch’s Platinum Jubilee - it may never happen again. That’s quite something, in the framework of this country’s history. Even dreary old Queen Victoria didn’t clock up 70 years.

I have no time for the hangers-on in the royal family, or indeed some senior members, but the Queen stands alone, and I admire her very much. She was 25 when she ascended the throne. When I was 25 I was going to the pub and island-hopping in Greece, self-absorbed and carefree. HRH has led a selfless life of duty that none of us can imagine, and few of us would want.

She has been a constant throughout our lives, and through a period of great social change, and now we have this brief and rather special window of time to reflect on and celebrate her 70-year reign.

And blimey, what a celebration we’re in for! This week it was revealed that puppet corgis, a musical tribute led by the ubiquitous Ed Sheeran and a giant 3D wire bust of the Queen will be among the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in London. A People’s Pageant on June 5 will include an aerial artist suspended under a vast helium balloon, bearing the Queen’s image, and a 20ft puppet of a young Princess Elizabeth. Celebrities taking part include Dame Shirley Bassey, Torvill and Dean, Alan Titchmarsh and Gok Wan.

A huge military parade is planned, with 1,750 people and 200 horses, and celebrating seven decades of culture, music and fashion will be Lambeth walkers, teddy boys, Daleks and a fleet of James Bond cars. We can also expect BMX stunt cyclists jumping onto Land Rovers, mobility scooters fashioned into flamingos, and the Queen’s 1947 wedding highlighted with a giant musical cake playing Bollywood tunes.

I’m exhausted already! Our 96-year-old monarch will need her cast-iron stamina for all that razzmatazz. The show is, says director, David Zolkwer: “All about how, through the recollections and stories and experiences we share, we can see how we are all connected - through time, to each other, and to the Queen.”

l So what are your recollections, stories and experiences of the Queen and her Jubilees of the past? Share them with us by emailing: emma.clayton@nqyne.co.uk