AS THOUGH cocking a snook at Paris, the favourites to win the Games, the Queen last night eschewed champagne and entertained members of the International Olympic Committee at Buckingham Palace with the finest Sussex sparkling wine.
As a grand finale to the IOC inspectors’ visit to London to assess the capital’s bid for the 2012 Games, the Queen pulled out all the stops and gave them all the trimmings of a state banquet. Even the menu was printed in English rather than the usual palace French.
Although the main course was breast of duck, palace chefs had prepared halal chicken for the several Muslim members of the IOC delegation.
“The Queen has taken a close personal interest in this dinner,” a palace spokeswoman said. “With only 46 guests it is, by our standards, an intimate occasion.”
The monarch may also have been anxious to draw a line under her recent reported remarks that she believed that many Londoners were not behind the bid, and that Paris would probably win. It is the only occasion during their visit that IOC rules have permitted the committee to be wined and dined by their host bidding city, in the wake of a past bribery scandal in Salt Lake City.
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Guests sat at one long table in the State Dining Room, one of the State Apartments that the public can see every summer. The Queen sat between Nawal El Moutawakel, the Moroccan woman who chairs the IOC’s Evaluation Committee, and Sam Ramsamy, its South African member.
Farther down the table sat a substantial government presence including Tony and Cherie Blair, Gordon Brown, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, and Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister. They were joined by two unlikely bedfellows: Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, and Michael Howard, the Tory leader.
Four British “athlete ambassadors” joined the party: Sir Steve Redgrave, Denise Lewis, Jonathan Edwards and Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson, the latter representing past Paralympics competitors.
The Palace was floodlit, the Royal Standard that is normally reserved for great events of state flew from the flagpole, sentries in bearskins who normally get the order to fall out much earlier in the day patrolled the gates, and members of the Yeomen of the Guard in their scarlet Elizabethan costumes decorated the quadrangle, as Olympic-style flaming torches burnt at each side of the Grand Entrance.
Guests were welcomed by the Princess Royal, an equestrian competitor at the 1976 Montreal Olympics and now an IOC member, and by her daughter Zara Phillips, who harbours hopes of following in her mother’s footsteps.
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IOC visitors were led through the sumptuous state apartments to the Blue Drawing Room, where they were served aperitifs of Nyetimber sparkling white from the Sussex vineyard owned by Andy Hill, a prominent pop songwriter.
After dinner the Queen led her guests into the Picture Gallery to view a small exhibition of mementoes from the Games of 1908 and 1948, both of which were held in London.
Prominent among the exhibits was a pair of white riding breeches worn by the Princess Royal in Montreal in 1976. Beat that, Paris.