Miles of smiles were on show in Repton in June 1985 as the village played host to the Duchess of Kent.
The Duchess wowed the children as she opened the new music school in the village and impressed them with her cheeriness as she broke into a trot to ask four-year-old Sally Matthews for one of her crisps.
Later the Duchess also stooped down on her knees so that she could sign the plaster-cast of injured ten-year-old footballer Martin Pettitt. The Duchess took a slim gold pen from her bag and signed it simply "Katherine".
The ad-lib surprises the cheerful Duchess created were merely a diversion away from the crisply stage-managed tour of Repton with the only people not smiling being the police and security staff.
Chief inspector Lynn Burns said the only alert of the day was a computer scanner not working at East Midlands Airport but this was not a security scare and the Duchess was not delayed.
The Duchess's first call of the day was to unveil the plaque in the new £375,000 music school. Here the Royal visitor received a bouquet from 18-year-old Rosie Dunn.
Afterwards the Duchess had lunch in the school's 400 hall – so called because the hall was built and opened by the Queen 400 years after Repton School started.
Children from Repton Primary, St Wystan's Preparatory and Repton Preparatory lined the streets of Repton and were rewarded with a lengthy chat and walkabout.
