Singer Ellie Goulding has told of her "gushing" backstage encounter with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Goulding, 24, was invited to serenade William and Kate's first dance at their wedding after the couple saw her perform at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Bangor in May last year.
Rapper Tinie Tempah had introduced her to the couple backstage who told her they had enjoyed the show.
In an interview with the Evening Standard magazine she said: "Prince William was just really gushing, and like, 'I really enjoyed the show'. He is so nice, just genuinely the nicest human being."
A Buckingham Palace aide later came to watch the band rehearsing for their first US tour - although Goulding did not mention the aide's presence to the other band members.
She said: "I kept it a secret - I just told them to be on their best behaviour."
Days later the Palace confirmed the booking for the wedding on April 29.
Goulding said: "And then we all just forgot about it because we had to focus 100 per cent on the task in hand, which was America. But when we got back, even though we'd just toured, we rehearsed for another week just for the wedding."
She sang Your Song - which she recorded as the soundtrack to John Lewis adverts last Christmas - for the first dance before going on to perform her hits Starry-Eyed and The Writer, along with covers by Stevie Wonder and The Killers. The singer, who is from the village of Lyonshall near Hereford, also revealed that she had deliberately changed her natural accent as a child.
She said: "I watched a lot of films and television and I realised there was this whole other accent, like the one news presenters have, so I copied that. That's why it appears I speak quite well, but I'm not meant to."
The singer now blames panic attacks that she experienced years later on this transformation.
Goulding, whose father left when she was five, said: "I was giving myself the pressure of being this other person and succeeding. But there's another girl who was meant to go down the bad route - dead-end jobs, taking drugs, being gobby, not giving a f***.
"And that's my dark side, I suppose, and I have to accept it will never fully leave me."
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