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no idea of the grandeur to come.
Eventually we arrived in the staff snooker room.
This is where we talked through the music and
ceremonial with the Director of Music before
entering the Ballroom. But I still had no idea where
the Ballroom was. At a given signal, a plain painted
door in the corner of the room was opened and out
we stepped on to the Musicians balcony. Gosh!
What a surprise. The scene which greeted me
was magnificent. It even smelt luxurious. (I soon
discovered that they go through the state rooms
with an incense burner to give off the heady smell -
almost like a church). If mobile phones had been
invented, I’d have rung my mother immediately.
Up until then, the height of sophistication for me
was a steak and Irish coffee at the Berni Inn.
The ceremony at the banquets is very carefully
controlled - a piece of state theatre designed to
impress. Guests will have been sent a gold-edged
invitation twelve weeks before the event.
On arrival the guests are all given a printed booklet
with the seating plan inside. This shows them their
seat marked with a blue dot. There are no display
boards in the foyer with everyone scrabbling around
looking for their table number. It’s not the golf club
dinner you know! Guests have to glide seamlessly
to their seat. The booklet also gives the menu and
wine list and the programme of music to be played
by the orchestra and the pipers who play after dinner.
I played for my first state banquet on the 5th October
1971 for the Emperor of Japan. In those days there
was never any notion that Buckingham Palace would
ever be open to the public. Perish the thought!
So it really was a hidden world - gazed at through the
railings by countless millions but shrouded in mystery.
So imagine how nervous I felt when, at the age of 19,
I went with the orchestra to the Palace for my first
banquet. The ‘workers’ entrance to the Palace is
in-between the Queens Gallery and the current public
entrance. When you go on a visit just look out for the
huge arched door, with a small door cut into it. There
is usually a policeman standing by it. This is the
entrance to the ‘back of house’. A world of kitchens,
changing rooms, preparation rooms, china cleaning
rooms and goodness knows what else. Everything
may look superbly calm on the surface, but it is
organised chaos underneath.
On the first day of a state visit the royal luncheon
will have been served and the visiting party will be
safely relaxing in the Belgium suite on the first floor
of the Palace overlooking the Mall.
We had our meal in the staff canteen with footmen,
Yeoman Warders, Life Guards and various frock-
coated flunkies. It looked like a meeting of the
servants from Downton Abbey. But more of us.
We then had to navigate a set of whitewashed
corridors with tiled floors. There is as much ‘back
stairs’ area as there is ‘front of house’. You can have
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