People probably assume that this bloke dressed like Osama Bin Laden is the first comedian to break the security of a Royal Palace on an important day where dignitaries are in attendance.
However, those people would be wrong, because I did it (admittedly by accident, but that might be more frightening) as long ago as 1990. Honestly, itÂ’s true.
As a struggling writer I had got a job as a researcher on the “Macmillan Encyclopaedia of the Royal Family.” I ended up writing quite a few entries, though they didn’t credit me in the final book, as I noted when I saw it for sale in a remainder shop for a couple of quid a few years later. Unfortunately for Macmillan the book came out just before the Royal Family began disintegrating meaning it was out of date almost immediately after it was published.
Anyway, as a researcher I was granted access to the library in Buckingham Palace (which ultimately turned out to be not very useful so I only ever went to it once). As we know security at the Royal Palaces is very tight and they canÂ’t just let anyone wander in off the streets, so before I was allowed in I had to be checked over and given a special pass.
Ironically to get the pass I had to go into Buckingham Palace. The day I went along happened to be the occasion when all the world leaders (including the first and moderately less stupid President Bush) were attending some conference or party or something (IÂ’m sure you can look it up if youÂ’re interested), but that would be later on in the evening. I was there in the daytime. I went to the front gates of Buckingham Palace and was allowed in to a room on the far right (as you look at it) where my application for access would be considered. At the time I was using a large silver camera case (that I had won in a competition from Empire magazine) as a brief case. It was much too big and heavy for this purpose, but at no point in my adventure did anyone ask to look inside it.
I spoke to a woman in the office and she said that my application would be fine, but that I needed to go to another office to get the actual pass. She told me to go around the outside of the building until I came to an arched entrance. What she didnÂ’t explain was that she meant me to go back out the front gates and then round the perimeter of the building to the side entrance (where the shop is). So I left her office, with my large suspicious silver case and simply walked along the front of the building.
I was a bit confused about what she meant and so was moving awkwardly, some might say shiftily, but no-one challenged me. I passed a guard with a big gun with a bayonet on the top and gave him a nervous smile, but he just kept looking front and centre and didn’t ask me what I was doing or try to stab me with his pointy gun. I got to an archway and walked through it and found myself in a courtyard in the centre of the palace. There was no-one around and I could have gone anywhere I wanted, with my “bomb” and left it somewhere surreptitiously to await the arrival of all the major leaders of the world, who would then be killed by its deadly contents. That is if the case had contained explosive materials rather than a couple of pens and an A4 pad.
In hindsight I wish IÂ’d taken the opportunity to look around and see if I could meet any of my favourite Royals, but I was aware that this didnÂ’t seem like the reception place that the lady who had directed me had described. So I walked out to the front of the Palace again and continued to walk along the front. Eventually I got to the end, where there was a guard room. I stood outside it for a bit, looking confused and then tapped on the window to get the attention of some of the highly vigilant protectors of the Queen. A couple came out and we had a jokey conversation where I explained where I was trying to get to and they laughed at me for being confused (rather than allowing me to laugh at them for their total failure to prevent a breach of the palace by an unidentified visitor) and told me that I was meant to go out of the gates and then round to the side of the building.
Having explained this they went back into their guardroom and trusted me to go back out the gates.
Which luckily for them, I did.
OK, it might not rate with kissing Prince William (though it was his mum I was more interested at the time – and I did manage to make her laugh and look at me sexily once, but that’s a story for another slow day), but I think it highlights that Royal security has never been all it’s been cracked up to be.
If you manage to get a copy of the Encyclopaedia the only entry that I remember as definitely mine was about the Isle of Mann. I was quite proud of that one.
