Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason jokes CBE is for ‘long service’

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has been awarded a CBE for a career in music spanning more than five decades.

The stalwart of one of Britain’s most successful bands joked “I’ve got the long service medal” for his stint with the progressive rock group he co-founded in the mid 1960s and which had huge commercial and critical success in the following decades.

Looking back at his career the 75-year-old said: “It’s quite extraordinary, because you never have a sense of that time passing.”

He also revealed he briefly chatted to the Duke of Cambridge, who hosted the Buckingham Palace investiture, about their shared love of flying.

Pink Floyd’s psychedelic rock was the sound of the late 1960s, but after their influential frontman Syd Barrett left they regrouped and produced a progressive sound that saw them notch up huge sales for albums like The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall.

Mason, who has a priceless collection of Ferraris, Maseratis, Aston Martins and Bugattis, said about his brief chat with William, a former air ambulance helicopter pilot,: “What was quite nice was I’ve met him very briefly before and one thing we do share is flying helicopters.

“Cars are my thing, originally when they told me I’d got this award they said it’s for music – I thought they were going to say it’s for services to the used car trade.

“But if you fly helicopters there’s always a whole bunch of things you end up talking about.”