Jim Mason
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Male 1973A lot goes on behind the scenes that most people do not know about, so I hope that this dit will be of interest.
In 1973 I received a directive from Admiralty, saying that they wanted to start a "Prestige Diary" of R M Band engagements around the world, presumably to justify our existence. Prestige engagements were classified as ;
a Foreign visits
b Television appearances
c Performances in the presence of the Royal Family or heads of other
states
d International Sporting Events
To get an idea of what this would entail, I was asked to submit a list of all the engagements in these categories that we had undertaken in the past two years.
I phoned the Admiralty and explained that this would give a totally misleading picture of what the Band Service did. I explained that in the previous two years the Portsmouth Band had made 85 foreign visits. With the Royal Family on board there would be at least one engagement every day and sometimes as many as 7 engagements a day, and they would all come under the various categories. I suggested that a collective declaration such as "State visit to Mexico" would cover whole areas and avoid endless repetition, pointing out that even for Entering Harbour the band would play with the Queen standing alongside. This, I felt was viewed with some scepticism and I was told that they needed a full description of each engagement and deatails of what the band did on every engagement.
My report consisted of 28 pages of A4 and I have particular memories of the report for 14 March 1973, when the report read for the third engagement of the day;
a Foreign visit, Male, Maldive Islands.
b Live television broadcast
c Attended by HM The Queen and the President of the Republic of The
Maldives
d International Sporting Event. Publicised locally as " An Internatiional
Football Match, between The Republic of The Madives and England
(Representative Team from H M Yacht "Britannia")"
The score was 6-2 to The Maldives and two members of the band played
in the England team.
I was never again asked to make a sinilar declaration.
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