The Queen meets legendary guitarists Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Brian May (l to r) during a reception at Buckingham Palace. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP/Getty
"Philip and I are interested in music and we've had this terrible press," the Queen recently told Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the master of the Queen's music. "We are not philistines." She may have regretted her boast when today's Daily Telegraph plopped onto the breakfast table alongside the Tupperware storage jars.
Yesterday, on the very day she announced a new award for musicians, the Queen invited a gaggle of ageing rockers into her lovely home and made it quite clear she had no idea who they were. The Telegraph kindly put the story on its front page with a big photograph, and it's well worth a read.
"Have you been playing long?" was her question to Eric Clapton, followed by, "Are you a guitarist too?" to Jimmy Page. Presumably they don't have internet search engines at the palace, which makes you wonder what on earth she said to Bill Gates while she was knighting him today.
