For some reason I am hearing Graham Chapman’s voice in my head.
I figured after she says “Hello”, he says, “Hi, may I please speak to Her Majesty / Elizabeth / Grandma?” and she says “This is she.” That’s how we do it at Chez Zsofia, at any rate. I cannot get used to cell phones where everybody knows who’s calling and who’s picking up. It seems rude to me not to do the dance.
“Oh hellooooooooooo!” <tm Jon Stewart>
This is mandatory phone protocol at many businesses, and seems like what I’d expect a queen to be doing.
There was that one time she used, “S’up, Dawg?”
“Yo, talk to the Queen.”
Right. Then once the queen herself is actually on the horn, she says, “Moshi Moshi.”
“This is We.”
I get that, but my point is: no matter how rich or famous or powerful you are, at some point in your life, a phone is gonna ring and it’s gonna be for you. What do you say when you put the receiver up to your ear?!?
Actually, as it’s phrased in the thread title, I’m guessing the Queen Elizabeth (II) answers her phone with a communications officer.
What is the meaning of this!
In point of fact, I suspect she may deal with close friends with some variant on “This is Brenda” or some similar flip line. The Queen is rumored to have a delicious sense of humor in private which she rarely gets to show, owing to the seriousness with which she (and the whole Royal Family) take their duties, and I’m quite certain she knows, and laughs at, the irreverent stuff like Spitting Image – so I could see her doing precisely that.
There was a note in the William Safire “On Language” column about 20 years back regarding the appropriateness of “It’s me” as opposed to the ultra-precisionist “It is I” in which the anecdote was told of the Queen in a limo overhearing two young girls arguing about who was in the limo, one maintaining it was the Queen and the other that it was Princess Margaret, and she rolled down the window and said to the girl arguing that it was her (she?), “You’re right. It’s me” – thereby conclusively proving that “It’s me” is indisputably part of The Queen’s English. 
To prove she isn’t a fox spirit.
Only if she is talking to an Emperor.
If assorted TV programs are to be believed, she does not answer the phone. An equerry or butler answers the phone and announces the caller to Her Majesty. However, in a biography of the Queen Mother, there is an indication that she does answer the phone directly because there’s a comment that the switchboard got to say, “Your Majesty, Her Majesty is on the line.”
“Sorry I’m away from the throne.”
That’s particularly funny on this side of the Atlantic where “throne” is a euphemism for “toilet” - don’t know if it is in the UK or not, but the image I got of the Queen answering the phone in the bathroom was not in keeping with the old lady’s dignity.
Since she carries a cell phone - and texts, not bad for an octagenarian - this might once have been true but isn’t anymore.