BBC BOSS WHO TOLD CHARLES HIS TASTE WAS EXECRABLE

AT THE Bath Festival in 1999, Prince Charles took exception to a concert of Bartók and Schoenberg compositions. The sound of them was ‘like scraping a nail over a blackboard’, he complained to John Drummond, the BBC music controller. After a pause, Drummond said cuttingly: ‘Your taste in music is as execrable as is your taste in art and architecture.’ As the two men continued to argue, the Lord Lieutenant of Somerset, who had accompanied the Prince to the concert, became anxious. ‘You must stop this,’ he urged one of Charles’s courtiers. ‘Interpose your body between them.’ But the Prince was laughing. ‘I’m enjoying this,’ he said. ‘I like John. No one’s honest with me like that.’