'Cool as a cucumber': Goldie praises 'beautiful' Prince Harry
Goldie has praised "beautiful" Prince Harry for his candidness about mental health issues.
The 58-year-old drum 'n' bass legend will always be grateful to the former soldier for supporting his 2011 TV show 'Goldie's Band: By Royal Appointment' - in which the producer and other music experts conducted a nationwide search for musicians and coached them ahead of a performance at Buckingham Palace - and can see a lot of similarities between the Duke of Sussex and his late mother, Princess Diana.
He told the Sunday Times Style magazine of receiving his MBE in 2016: "It was the King, Charlie, who gave me it. The Queen had a bit of a cold. He knew I was doing some stuff with his son Harry. I was doing 'Goldie’s Band', a series about trauma...
"Harry’s beautiful. I’m a Harry fan. He’s cool as a cucumber.
"He can f****** fly an Apache helicopter but he’s not scared to talk about mental health. He’s his mother’s son. I love Harry because he got on board with the project when no one else would touch it with a barge pole.”
Goldie was happy to accept the MBE for services to music and young people because of what it meant to his mother.
He laughed: “It’s like a Blue Peter badge but a bit more shiny. Does it really mean anything? It means that my mother’s very proud.”
Goldie - whose real name is Clifford Price - befriended the late David Bowie thanks to his drum 'n' bass nights at London club the Blue Note.
He recalled: “He’d come down in 1996-97, have a little smoke break outside and go back in again.
“People would leave him alone. We had everyone in there, but they had to know their place, leave their baggage at the front door and get their head down. No one gave a f*** who you were.
"The Blue Note wasn’t like Studio 54, all pretend. The Spice Girls would come down — all mad as a box of frogs. Catherine Zeta-Jones was a massive metalhead. She was always in there, having a little shake.”
And Goldie credits the 'Starman' hitmaker for giving him some valuable career advice.
He said: "Reinvention is everything. Bowie always said to me, ‘Go and reinvent yourself.’ Look at how many times Bowie reinvented himself. Don’t let the ego creep in. Go back to what’s important. What can the music tell me? How can I tell this story differently?”
