Earl throws first formal banquet at the age of 13

PRINCE HARRY took part in a State visit for the first time last year at the grand age of 32, escorting King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain to Westminster Abbey.

But in Cornwall, they get cracking with their public duties decades earlier — at the tender age of 13, in fact, in the case of Albert Clarence Eliot, 11th Earl of St Germans.

For I can disclose that Albie, as the young Earl is more familiarly known, will tomorrow greet guests at Port Eliot, his magnificent family seat — it’s generally thought to have 124 rooms, 13 staircases and 82 chimneys — for a banquet celebrating the Royal Wedding.

‘Albie will be meeting the guests,’ confirms a spokesman for Port Eliot. ‘It should be a really fun way for people to enjoy the Royal Wedding.’

Unlike Harry and Meghan Markle’s bash, where guests will have to eat

bowl food standing up, this will be a four-course, sit-down feast in the Drawing Room.

Before the nuptials, guests are invited to enjoy a glass of Pimm’s or champagne and canapes in Port Eliot’s conservatory, before watching the service on a large screen in the Round Room.

Guidance is available for those who are unsure how to attire themselves: ‘Dress: Up.’

Two glasses of wine are included in the £50 ticket price, with a cash bar available for those who feel the need to make repeated toasts to Harry and Meghan.

The Earl inherited his title in 2016 when his grandfather, Peregrine, died aged 75, a decade after the traumatic death of his son Jago — Albie’s father — who suffered a fatal epileptic fit in the bath.

In 2015, Peregrine proposed selling Port Eliot to the Prince of Wales for £10 million — ‘a sensational deal,’ according to his third wife, Cathy Wilson, a former magazine journalist some 30 years his junior.

But the sale did not go through and Cathy moved out last November.

Locals appear eager to welcome the new era: tickets for the banquet have sold out. But presumably young Albie will be celebrating with nothing stronger than Ribena.