Queen Anne's dead
used humorously or ironically to suggest that a piece of supposed ‘news’ is in fact stale, or more broadly that a person who says something is simply stating the obvious or restating a well-worn or accepted truth. informal The expression is first recorded in 1798 , by which time Queen Anne had indeed been dead for 84 years; but there is evidence of an earlier version, ‘Queen Elizabeth is dead’, from the 1730s.
2005 Liverpool Daily Echo ‘McFadden's gone past the three French players there’, said Lawrenson , who can also tell us that Queen Anne is dead, night follows day and bears defecate in the woods.
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