Recently, my current employers, whose services to tourism have been massive, were invited to meet Princess Anne at a garden party in Edinburgh. Alas, the nearest I have ever come to royalty was accidentally walking on the queen’s red carpet at a public event. The Egyptian government had lent some of the treasures from Tutankhamen’s tomb to the British Museum, and the queen was going to open the exhibition. I was at that time a student at the Institute of Archaeology, now part of University College London, and the BM was my second home, so to speak. The Institute is located in Gordon Square, a few minutes’ walk away from the museum. We were always being sent round to look at the displays in the public galleries, and occasionally got to work in the stores.

The morning of the royal visit, I was working as usual on some stone age tools in the depths of the massive warren of underground passages and storage rooms below the public galleries. Those were the days before the war on terror; nowadays they wouldn’t have let any students in for a week before a VIP visit. The member of staff responsible for me had promised to come and warn me when I had to get out. However, as it approached lunchtime, there was no sign of him, and I thought I had probably better get going. The way out from my particular part of the underground maze opened onto one of the public galleries. I took my usual route and emerged from a door in the panelling of a gallery full of printed books to find myself standing on a red carpet in the middle of a roped-off area, with about a hundred people staring at me. Scandalised attendants leapt out from all sides and hustled me and my battered briefcase out of the way. As I looked back over my shoulder, someone had got out a carpet sweeper and was running it over the area my plebeian feet had polluted!