At 3pm precisely, a fleet of immaculate limousines swished up College Road, and a rather bemused Prince Charles alighted from one of them, surrounded by his security team and his Press secretary.

A growing crowd of people had gathered to see him.

It was a cold but sunny day, so I put on a rather fetching faux fur hat to greet him.

I went out onto the entrance of our house, and watched him climbing the stairs down to a basement entrance, at which I called out to him, thus:

‘When you are finished in there, sir, would you like a cup of tea?’

He looked straight up at me, smiled, and replied:

‘Yes. A great idea’.

Truly astonished I and raced back into the house, calling out to my husband to put the kettle on.

Almost immediately, a group of plain clothes security men turned up at our front door to check us out. To case the joint and see if we posed some kind of security threat . They were most displeased with me ,as I had managed to wreck the entire afternoon’s schedule and timetable with my cheeky request.

I was not to know that there was a helicopter on stand-by, just down the road in East Brighton park, waiting to whisk Charles and his entourage back to Highgrove, and that this would now have to be delayed.

I had ruined their well-laid plans.

Suddenly, a slightly flustered Charles arrived at our front door. I welcomed him in politely and warmly, and watched him nervously playing with his cuff links as he walked into our sitting room, at which point he doubled up with laughter, as he saw an original Ingres print of a young Napoleon Bonaparte on one of the walls. My late husband was an avid collector of Napoleana.

This broke the ice, and laughing with him I swiftly pointed out another painting on an adjacent wall.

‘But we’ve got Wellington over here’. I said.