Australian honeymoon for Royal couple

Press, 29 May 1981, Page 9

Australian honeymoon for Royal couple

NZPA London Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer will honeymoon in Australia after their wedding on July 29, according to a London columnist. Buckingham Palace is not saying where the newlyweds will go and there has been much speculation. But the “Daily Express” columnist William Hickey • yesterday plumped for Australia. “An old salt, swearing by every puff of his gnarled briar that it’s true, says that the Royal Yacht Britannia will shortly weigh anchor and head for Australia,” he said.

“The keen-eyed sea-cap-tain further insists that the vessel will reach there bj r mid-July, and that Charles and Lady Diana will fly out to join it for their honeymoon.

“This would put paid to red-herring speculation about the West Indies and so on. “I take no responsibility for this rumour and certainly

the Palace is keeping mum

“However, Australia would make a good base from which to set out and explore the far more romantic South Seas: balmy evenings, breezes, grass skirts, etc. “So much more suitable, don’t you think, than the crashing of steel-band dustbin lids? 11

Hickey said there was another pointer: “The Queen is due to visit Australia in September. So Britannia could economically be left behind for her use when the newly-weds have finished with it.”

The surviving Goons, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe have been invited to the Royal wedding.’

The Prince is one of the Goons’ greatest fans. He once wrote an introduction to a book of Goon Show scripts and described himself as one of their many “devoted and dotty supporters,” Mr Milligan, who is staying at his brother’s home in

Sydney, was given the news of his invitation in a telephone call from his manager. Later he joked: “When I was told I’d been invited I said that was a terrible thing because I wanted to marry him.”

He also had a theory about why he had been put on the guest list. “They must be short of people, they must have people turning him down,” he told the London “Daily Mail.”

“He must have said, ‘We’ve got to fill this place. It's a big place, St Paul's, you know.’

Harry Secombe, who will be at the weddinhg with his wife Myra, said: “It's beyond our wildest dreams. We had planned to watch the wedd-

ing on telly. “I haven't decided yet what to give him. Maybe a cardboard cut-out of Battersea power station: you know, something that he hasn’t got already.”