NEW EARL ROBED

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30026, 10 January 1963, Page 11

NEW EARL ROBED

Intends To Do Useful Job

(Special Crspdt. NZJ>.A.) • LONDON, January 9 The ninth Earl of Buckinghamshire, who a week ago was a council gardener, at lOgns a week, has been fitted for the first time with a peer’s scarlet and ermine robe, says the "Daily Mail.” The Earl, Vere Frederick Cecil Hobart-Hampden, aged 61, put on his hired ceremonial dress in the sittingroom of his semi-detached house in Southend. Essex. “Now this feels more realistic,” he said. "The last few days have not just been a lot of talk. My ambition is to maintain the dignity of the title and of the family. “People have been calling me Lord Fred. I want this to stop. To my family I am Pip and my friends call me Vic, which is my way of shortening my real Christian name of Vere. “I intend to do a useful job as a peer. I shall not attend the Lords merely to cash in on the £3 a day appearance fee,” he said. “I come from a good family, I had a good education and it won't take me long to adapt myself to debating in the House of Lords,” he said. “If it looks as though the Commonwealth will be sold down the drain when Britain enters the Common Market I shall have something to say about it. “And if my new colleague! in the Lords ask me for gardening tip® I shall be glad to help.”