A royal gatecrasher at a private party

When I was 18, in the 1950s, being selected to wait on royalty was a big honour.

I was a second-year student in the catering department of the Welsh College of Advanced Technology. My job was to act as wine waiter at a dinner at Cardiff Castle to welcome the Duke of Edinburgh to the principality.

I was chosen as wine waiter because I had worked in industry before college and supposedly had more confidence than the others.

My friend Alan and I planned to have a party after the big event on left-over food and dregs of wine bottles we stashed away.

My first embarrassing moment, though, came when I went to pour a glass of wine for the duke and missed the glass completely. Over the beautiful white lace went a bottle of red wine. I froze. Actually only a spot of red wine fell on to the linen, but it was enough to frighten me into immobility. The duke looked up at me and smiled and winked. I served that wine so quickly that I almost forgot to save any for later.

After the dinner Alan and I found a quiet place to have our party: we sat on the bottom of a winding fire escape. A noise above caused us to look up. Who should be coming down the stairs heading for the bottom steps? Yes, the duke himself.

"It's okay, lads," said the duke and jumped over our banquet. "Enjoying yourselves, I see." He chatted with us for a minute or two, refused our offer of a drink while he waited for his car, jumped in, waved and vanished around the corner of the castle.

We couldn't quite believe what had happened. The man is a saint in my eyes. Standards were very strict in the 1950s: to say that it could have been an embarrassment is a great understatement.