Wherever Shirley Thompson goes, she always makes sure she has a CD of her own musical compositions with her. “A lot of people have complimented me, or mocked me, for my initiative … I’m the ultimate entrepreneur,” she says.
This habit came in particularly handy when she found herself in conversation with the then Prince Charles at Clarence House in March last year. She was there to celebrate her inclusion on The Powerlist, which lists the UK’s most influential Black people. “We were chatting about music, and he was asking me about the kind of music I wrote,” Thompson recalls. “Then he said that he would love to hear my music one day, and I told him that by chance I had a CD of it in my bag.”
