I was in the Royal Albert Hall on Monday for the Proms, Mahler’s 5th Symphony performed by the Bamburg Symphony Orchestra. A hot sultry night but a very fine performance. Looking around the auditorium I thought back to some memorable occasions when I’ve been at the Royal Albert Hall before (RAH) which go back too thirty years ago
In the late seventies I was a Roadie for the 'James Last Orchestra' on a couple of occasions when he played at the RAH usually at Easter time, a job I got from the local Manpower office which was my usual source of extra money when I was a student. When he played the RAH on Thursday 3rd April 1980 it also happened to be my twenty-first birthday and I was on duty. So I was there during the day helping the band get their kit set up and when the gig finished I had to work and manage the other helpers to get everything packed away again. This took until about 0300 in the morning. The next day was Good Friday the Easter Weekend and I was due to get the train from Paddington back to Wiltshire and my home town to spend the weekend with my family and friends. As it was so late I decided to bed down with my bag in one of the ‘boxes’ at the Albert Hall and I managed to get a couple of decent hours sleep. I was woken up by cleaners moving across the floor of the hall with brooms at about 0600, so I got up and walked out of the hall and across Hyde Park to Paddington Station where I got the train back home. A very different way to spend one’s twenty first.
I’d also been in the Hall the year before when I was part of a Royal Guard of Honour for the Queen Mother who was there to hand out degrees to London University students. We had spent quite a few weekends drilling for this big occasion and we were all in our Number 2 uniforms, boots shined to perfection with borrowed chromed shiny bayonets on the ends of our rifles. We stood at attention in the entrance hall, for quite a long time as Her Majesty was delayed. As happens when men have been standing in the same position for a long period, the blood doesn’t reach the brain. I was in the second rank and as I stood at attention I saw the man in front of me, a guy called Jim Storr start to waver; he then fell like a plank, face down onto the marble floor with a loud crash. The Queen Mum still hadn’t arrived, but nobody moved, the protocol being that if you fainted, you just lay there on the floor until the event had finished, as the Royals were used to seeing soldiers flat out. Storr then started to wake up and realize where he was; he slowly picked himself up and staggered over to the side of the hall, rifle in hand, looking as white as a sheet, and pulling at his collar and tie to get some circulation going. This is just when the Queen Mum arrived and started walking down the front rank; she walked past the gap in the line and turned to see a very ill looking Jim Storr struggling to stand up. She gave a sort of grimace but carried on, passing me in a wave of perfume. Not surprisingly, Storr never lived down but it was a huge relief for us all that the whole occasion was over, and back at the mess we all got very, very hammered.
In the late seventies I was a Roadie for the 'James Last Orchestra' on a couple of occasions when he played at the RAH usually at Easter time, a job I got from the local Manpower office which was my usual source of extra money when I was a student. When he played the RAH on Thursday 3rd April 1980 it also happened to be my twenty-first birthday and I was on duty. So I was there during the day helping the band get their kit set up and when the gig finished I had to work and manage the other helpers to get everything packed away again. This took until about 0300 in the morning. The next day was Good Friday the Easter Weekend and I was due to get the train from Paddington back to Wiltshire and my home town to spend the weekend with my family and friends. As it was so late I decided to bed down with my bag in one of the ‘boxes’ at the Albert Hall and I managed to get a couple of decent hours sleep. I was woken up by cleaners moving across the floor of the hall with brooms at about 0600, so I got up and walked out of the hall and across Hyde Park to Paddington Station where I got the train back home. A very different way to spend one’s twenty first.
I’d also been in the Hall the year before when I was part of a Royal Guard of Honour for the Queen Mother who was there to hand out degrees to London University students. We had spent quite a few weekends drilling for this big occasion and we were all in our Number 2 uniforms, boots shined to perfection with borrowed chromed shiny bayonets on the ends of our rifles. We stood at attention in the entrance hall, for quite a long time as Her Majesty was delayed. As happens when men have been standing in the same position for a long period, the blood doesn’t reach the brain. I was in the second rank and as I stood at attention I saw the man in front of me, a guy called Jim Storr start to waver; he then fell like a plank, face down onto the marble floor with a loud crash. The Queen Mum still hadn’t arrived, but nobody moved, the protocol being that if you fainted, you just lay there on the floor until the event had finished, as the Royals were used to seeing soldiers flat out. Storr then started to wake up and realize where he was; he slowly picked himself up and staggered over to the side of the hall, rifle in hand, looking as white as a sheet, and pulling at his collar and tie to get some circulation going. This is just when the Queen Mum arrived and started walking down the front rank; she walked past the gap in the line and turned to see a very ill looking Jim Storr struggling to stand up. She gave a sort of grimace but carried on, passing me in a wave of perfume. Not surprisingly, Storr never lived down but it was a huge relief for us all that the whole occasion was over, and back at the mess we all got very, very hammered.
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