AFTERMATH,

In the days that followed the visit of Prince Charles to our home, I was

recognised in the streets around us ( We had made the front page of the local newspaper ‘The Evening Argus’ -an exclusive – with photos), and people constantly approached me for first-hand information on Charles. This became tiresome. My friends jokingly referred to me as ‘Your Royal Tea-ness’, which I loved.

In the end the pressure of it all became too much, so I took myself off for the weekend to Rye, to escape back to anonymity. I had become sick to death of being approached by people . How do ‘celebrities’ stand it.

Some go around in disguise, I’ve discovered, but others need to be recognised like my friends Martin Bell, and the late Anna Wing, the actress. Both were disappointed whenever they weren’t recognised.

However, when I returned after my weekend away, I decided to accept the invitation from BBC Radio Sussex , as it was at the time, to give an interview ( over the phone – a landline in those days) to a news programme.

The interview went well. The questions were general: ‘Did he take sugar?

What did he look like? What did he think of your house? ‘Where you nervous talking to him ? Etc. Etc,.

But the other thing I had to put up with was the amount of threatening hate mail I received from militant republicans. This was another reason why I fled to Rye.

I decided to ‘fight fire with fire’ to the writers of these letters, tell them that they were ‘preaching to the converted’, that I’d never been much of a royalist, but that I had invited him in ‘for a laugh’.

Much of this was true.

However, in this platinum Jubilee of the Queen’s 70 -year reign, more attention is being focused now on her likely successor : Prince Charles.

And all I can say is that I have become a real fan.

Even today on Sunday July 3 2022 I heard on the Paddy O’Connell programme on BBC 4,the journalist, Matthew Parris defend Prince Charles against some of his detractors, and I had to go along with him.

I think Charles is a good and honourable man, and will be an almost ideal and appropriate King to have in the following tumultous years to come .

He is our best bet in these uncertain times and in place of the most nefarious bunch of politicians we’ve had in a long time.

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