On Duty With the Queen: My Time as a Buckingham Palace Press Secretary Read Free Page A

to. As a reporter I’d interviewed the Prince of Wales regarding various environmental issues over the years, and had always admired him. Meeting him and his bride-to-be in 1981, just two days shy of their wedding, had been particularly special. I was the lead commentator for IRN’s coverage of the royal wedding alongside Brian Hayes, and I was privileged to have been granted 40 minutes with the couple in the Chinese Dining Room at Buckingham Palace.
    The Chinese Dining Room gets its name from its furniture, which was bought by the Prince Regent, later to become King George IV. It had originally been bought for the Brighton Pavilion – the extravagant folly the Prince had created as a royal retreat. Queen Victoria didn’t have a lot of time for the place, so, during her reign, she sold it to the Brighton Corporation and had the furniture put into storage. It wasn’t until early in the reign of King George V that it was moved into Buckingham Palace to grace the room it still sits in today.
    Little did I know when I travelled to the Palace to chat to the Prince and his young fiancée that evening that not only would I go on to attend numerous meetings in that same room, but 16 years after the wedding itself, I would be part of the team sitting around the same table, planning the late Diana, Princess of Wales’s funeral.
    On that day, however, all was positive and expectant; itwas a landmark meeting. It was also unusual, in that the then press secretary, Michael Shea, had given no guidance as to what could or could not be asked. Nothing was off limits. Due to Prince Charles’s unguarded comment about ‘whatever in love means,’ when the couple had been interviewed upon the announcement of their engagement, I couldn’t help but wonder if more intriguing snippets were to come.
    As it happened, nothing revealing came from the meeting, but over a cup of tea it was possible to at least gauge the feelings of the rather naïve, attractive 20-year-old girl who was going to be the focus of an unprecedented amount of global attention. It was also a first glimpse into the character of the woman who I would later come to call boss. Diana told me that her wedding day would be an overwhelming experience, but that she was not so much concerned for herself as she was for her father – the 8 th Earl Spencer. In 1978 he’d suffered a stroke that had left him quite unsteady. She explained that he was still determined to do his fatherly duty and walk his youngest daughter down the aisle of St Paul’s Cathedral – an aisle that was a daunting 210 feet long.
    I remember being touched by her capacity for caring and understanding. Putting other people’s needs before her own was a trait for which she would very soon come to be known, and one which I would witness time and again.
     
    I had been broadcasting for 15 years at the time of Charles and Diana’s wedding on Wednesday, 29 th July, 1981. In the months leading up to the big day I was charged withorganizing all of the outside broadcast commentary points along the processional route from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral – eight sites in all. I had decided that I would spend the day in the commentary booth on the Queen Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace. I could have chosen any one of the eight sites, but I wanted to be right at the heart of the occasion, witnessing both the beginning and the end of the day’s celebrations.
    My morning started with a sound check in the commentary booth at 5am, to ensure that everything was in working order. At 6am I was on the air setting the scene for listeners tuned into the
AM
breakfast show, and I continued to feed into other programming as the day progressed. Our coverage for IRN went out across the whole of the commercial radio network dotted throughout the UK – England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Royal events are organised down to the very last minute, which allowed for us to tailor our coverage accordingly. The day