The King has requested the Sugababes be played on the red carpet at his King’s Trust Awards ceremony as he celebrated the winners with a host of stars.
Hollywood celebrity George Clooney and wife lawyer Amal Clooney were joined by fellow trust supporters, actors Dame Joanna Lumley, Joseph Fiennes and TV presenter Dec Donnelly, one half of Ant and Dec, at a Buckingham Palace reception honouring recipients.
Fiennes dubbed the King the “patron saint of second chances” for the work of his trust supporting young people over almost five decades, ahead of the awards ceremony being staged on Thursday.
Ant and Dec, the trust’s goodwill ambassadors, will be hosting the awards ceremony for the 13th time and Donnelly joked how the King had offered to write some jokes for the pair “he’s going to do some script writing for us, it’s always gratefully received”.
After chatting to the girl group Sugababes, Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan, Siobhan Donaghy, who will open and close the ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Charles spoke to Radio 1 DJ Melvin Odoom.
The broadcaster, who will be playing a DJ set for those arriving on the red carpet, asked the King “Any tunes you want, let me know”, and said later “he asked for the Sugababes CD to be played.”
He joked: “I didn’t want to say to him we don’t use CDs anymore, I’m using USB, but I’ll drop the Sugababes.”
The girl group has just finished a tour and Buchanan said: “That’s very, very cool to know the King has requested us.
“We said to the King we’ve been around for 25 years and he was like wow, he was a bit taken a back.
“He said he wanted a CD and we think we’ll introduce him to Overload first, he was really lovely.”
George Clooney joined his wife who was supporting Alice, 19, winner of the Amal Clooney Women’s Empowerment Award after setting up a business teaching other women the traditional Kenyan craft of bead work.
She said Amal had been acting as a mentor and described the couple as “very intelligent people” and said “all the world is shining”, after being told she had won the award after taking part in a programme run by the King’s Trust International.
The trust will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026 and was started by Charles, when he was prince of Wales, following his concern too many young people were being excluded from society through a lack of opportunity.
In 1976, when he left the Royal Navy, he used the £7,400 he received in severance pay to fund a number of community schemes.
These early initiatives were the founding projects of his charity.
Fiennes said after talking to the King: “In the 25 years that I’ve been doing this we’ve just seen a collection of young potential that has been picked up and disenfranchised and not given the right opportunities, so I said to His Majesty, maybe it was inappropriate, but ‘you are the patron saint of second chances’.
“And giving young potential second chances is just vital, cost of living, mental crises after Covid, this deep rupture in our psyche, especially for the youth, has been massive, so for the trust to be running and doing what it’s doing is so extraordinary.
Among the celebrity supporters at the event were Former Saturdays singer Rochelle Humes, actor James Nelson-Joyce, model and actress Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Made in Chelsea stars Jamie Laing and partner Sophie Habboo and comic Tom Davis.
The King appeared moved by his conversation with Brandon Hulcoop, who presented him with an image of the royal family on the Buckingham Palace balcony printed in raised ink so it can be “seen” by visually impaired people.
The winner of the NatWest Thrive Enterprise Award, from Plymouth, was born blind and unable to find work until he took part in the King’s Trust’s Enterprise course, gaining the skills and support he needed to set up his own business producing Braille products.
Charles grasped his hand to shake it before asking about Brandon’s business, All Things Dotty.
“It wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t be for you, sir,” he told the King. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
