The singer told the newspaper: “My dad [Ross MacManus] used to play the staff ball at Buckingham Palace when I was a kid, and we had to go in the back door with the help. So I thought, this time I’m going in the front door. I went out of curiosity, sceptical and cynical.”
His father was a talented musician who played with Joe Loss and his orchestra in the 1950s and found TV fame singing Secret Lemonade Drinker in the R. White’s Lemonade adverts in the 1970s.
Costello went on: “The Palace itself is tatty – I didn’t lean on any pillars because I thought they may be papier mâché. But when I saw how much it meant to people in education, charity, medicine, I thought I could do with being less cynical. A marine behind me fainted from emotion.
“Afterwards, I sat with the Irish press, so I was in the Palace discussing Sinn Fein. Dad would have loved that. He was a lifelong republican and would have told me to go, like my mother did – just so I could look them in the eye.
“But the big mistake they’ve made… is that what they represent with ‘empire’ is unforgivable. Why don’t they just change the name in OBE to ‘excellence’? Then everybody could be happy.”
In 2019, Costello said he was “tickled” to be nominated for the honour by Theresa May, the then prime minister, saying it “confirms my long held suspicion nobody really listens to the words in songs”.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
