Norman Baker - ... and What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Don’t Want You To Know

W e all arrived much too early. I was to learn that the arrival time given to guests for royal visits was always much too early, even where the royal personage in question was so far down the pecking order that nobody really had very much idea who they were.

The reason, I discovered, was to prevent the apparently appalling possibility of someone arriving after the royal in question. On this occasion, the visitor was to be none other than the Queen herself, accompanied by the garrulous Prince Philip, so the delay between arrival and anything happening was even longer than normal.

It was 1999 and the unlikely setting was The Triangle, the new leisure centre in Burgess Hill, which the Queen was officially to open. A large crowd filled the main area of the leisure centre. Here and there bird tables had sprung up, offering various unappetising canaps and sorry-looking biscuits. There were no seats anywhere and a few of the elderly guests were clearly finding it something of an ordeal to be on their feet so long.

One elderly woman looked to be finding the wait particularly difficult and was leaning rather heavily on one of the bird tables. I spotted one of the Palace flunkeys nearby, part of the forward party that was milling around.

Is there a seat we can get for this lady? I asked, pointing to the woman in question.

Nobody is allowed to sit down in the presence of the Queen, he told me grandly, and walked away, leaving me agape and the old woman still clinging to the bird table. Presumably she would have been allowed to fall down, if necessary. I discovered later that this archaic etiquette was not simply enforced for the Queen. Her sister, Princess Margaret, who demanded curtseys and head bows from those whose presence she graced, decreed that nobody was allowed to sit without her permission, and no one was allowed to leave before her.

Although Burgess Hill was not in my Lewes constituency, it was only just outside, and I had been invited along for the occasion by Ken Blanshard, the then Lib Dem leader of Mid Sussex District Council whose new leisure centre it was. To pass the time, Ken showed me around the centre, but when we got to the balcony overlooking the main area where everyone had congregated, our way was barred by another Palace flunkey.

You cant come along here, sir, he said firmly.

What do you mean? I challenged, and pointed to Ken. Its his leisure centre.

Im sorry, sir, nobody can look down on the Queen.

The Queen of course was not even there, and would not be for some time. It occurred to me afterwards that he, the flunkey, would be looking down on the Queen, but perhaps that did not count. I began to wonder how many centuries these royal rules of etiquette had existed and, more to the point, why they had not withered on the vine, like bear baiting and sending children up chimneys.

A similar thought had occurred to me a few years earlier when, as then leader of Lewes District Council, I had attended an event in my council ward at Middle Farm in Firle, a village just outside Lewes. Middle Farm is a rather splendid farm shop offering a great range of local produce, including wines and ciders, much of it organic. It is now a tourist attraction in its own right. The royal guest on that occasion was Prince Charles. Again, everyone had been required to arrive much too early, and we were ushered into a rather too small room, naturally without anywhere to sit. People were beginning to grumble about it when the door opened and some sort of equerry, who gave a fair impression of John Inman in