Hard rock at the Palace; pre-wedding ball for 1500

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33382, 14 November 1973, Page 1

Hard rock at the Palace; pre-wedding ball for 1500

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) >

LONDON, November 13.

Buckingham Palace shook to the noise of a hard rock band today as 1500 guests danced the night away in a lavish pre-wedding ball for Princess Anne and her fiance, Captain Mark Phillips.

Cavalcades of limousines queued in the palace yard several hours before dawn to take the party-goers, including 26 members of foreign royalty, home to bed after a champagne breakfast served by uniformed footmen.

The ball was the formal beginning of Royal festivities for tomorrow’s wedding. The Queen held a banquet for 100 select guests in the glittering Throne Room of the Palace last night before joining the other guests to dance to the music of two bands, a traditional ballroom orchestra, and a rock group, against a background of chandeliers and ancient tapestries. Princes Anne and Captain Phillips were together for the last time before they become husband and wife in West-

minster Abbey on Wednesday.

Stag dinner

For Captain Phillips it was the second consecutive night of party-going, after a protracted stag dinner with 13 regimental colleagues in a fashionable London restaurant, where he downed a bottle of champagne in two gulps, and spilt his meal on his lap. Mr Tom Mark, manager of the restaurant in London’s Holland Park, said: “It was a stag party to remember. There must have been some really thick heads the next morning.'” He said Captain Phillips had ordered a duck dish and in his excitement to tip it out of a casserole dish on to his plate it had landed in his lap. TV interview In an unprecedented interview screened on British television last evening, Princess Anne and Captain Phillips spoke about their romance. The pre-recorded interview was the first time a British princess has been permitted to talk publicly about herself. The couple said they first met at a beer cellar in 1968 at a party for Britain's equestrian Olympic team. They did not fall in love at first sight. Captain Phillips said he was never very good with girls as a teenager — “not very successful, shall we say.” Princess Anne, while admitting to being nervous about her forthcoming wedding, joked about questions as to whether her wedding dress had any surprises. “Surprises? I haven’t got any holes in it, if that’s what you mean,” she said. (An interview with Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips is reported on page 12).