Buckingham Palace has revealed a sticky reality – Queen Elizabeth II is looking for a cleaner who can oversee the removal of chewing gum left by visitors to a royal residence.

Among the duties for the job at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh is: “To arrange for the removal of chewing gum from the Historic and State Apartments by the porters”, the palace said on its website.

The part-time position, which is paid 15,912 pounds (20,428 euros, $25,763) a year, would also involve cleaning the palace toilets and “washing of all crockery required for visits to the palace”.

The cleaner would also “report to the Housekeeper any defects in furniture and fittings”, “clean all brass to the standards required by the Housekeeper” and “cover all furniture in dust sheets” when no royals are staying in the residence.

The many duties mean candidates must be “physically fit and meticulous” and the post holder “will need to have a flexible approach to working hours when The Queen, members of the Royal Family and the High Commissioner are in residence”.

Holyroodhouse dates back to the 16th century and is the Queen’s official residence in Scotland. Parts of it are open to the public – a fact the royals may be regretting.

A royal source quoted by The Sun newspaper said: “You wouldn’t expect people to be chewing gum when they visit, let alone stick it on the priceless antiques or the parquet floor.”

She was captured ‘photo-bombing’ two Commonwealth Games athletes over the summer and has even posed for her first ‘selfie’.

But the Queen has confided that she actually finds the phenomena of people filming her on their mobile phones rather ‘strange’.

Never one to get on her soapbox, her feelings on the subject have, however, been made public by the US Ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun.

The 43-year-old diplomat, tipped as a future American president, told this month’s Tatler magazine that he was invited, along with his wife, to Buckingham Palace when they arrived in the UK last year.

He recalled how they had a ‘nice chat’ with the Queen, who told them ‘how strange she finds it these days, with the crowds all standing there holding up their mobile phones’.

‘She was essentially saying, ‘I miss eye contact,’ Mr Barzun told the magazine.

The 88-year-old sovereign is by no means a Luddite – owning a mobile phone and an iPod on which, it is said, staff download The Proms for her to listen to.

She and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, 93, are also said to be surprisingly computer literate.

But according to senior royal sources the Queen does find the trend for members of the public to stand close up and attempt to film their encounters with her ‘not a little disconcerting’.

On her recent state visit to Paris, it is understood that some over-excited members of the public had to be physically restrained as they rushed forward, camera phones brandished, to photograph and video her

The Queen was declared to have carried out the ‘best photo-bomb in history’ when she walked, smiling, into a shot being taken by two Australian hockey players at the Commonwealth Games earlier this summer.