King Charles took to the DJ decks alongside Sir Idris Elba at a Buckingham Palace garden party on Thursday as the monarch marked the 50th anniversary of The King’s Trust youth charity.
The light-hearted moment came amid a soggy ceremony on the palace lawns, where guests huddled under umbrellas as electronic music thumped from a makeshift DJ booth. The King, wearing a grey suit, blue tie and a red King’s Trust pin, spent more than an hour greeting roughly 50 young people and alumni supported by the charity before approaching Christian St Louis, a 22-year-old from Middleton who had been invited to perform after completing a Trust DJing course. Sir Idris, himself an alumnus of the charity, stood alongside St Louis as Charles “pressed play” and briefly joined in the set.
Sir Idris later laughed about the exchange, telling reporters the morning’s events at the National Youth Music Theatre had “taken me back” to his early experience there and that Charles “said he was going to DJ today, and he did.” The 53-year-old quipped that “he pressed play and as a DJ I know that’s the hardest part,” adding with a grin that the King “didn’t stick around, let’s put it that way.”
The garden party brought together a roll-call of celebrity ambassadors and supporters of the Trust, including broadcasters Ant and Dec and Holly Willoughby, actors Dame Helen Mirren and Damian Lewis, former England manager Sir Gareth Southgate and presenter Myleene Klass. Ant and Dec presented the King with a yearbook documenting stories from staff, volunteers and beneficiaries of the charity, which was founded in 1976.
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For many attendees the event underlined the Trust’s impact on young lives. Darnell Allman-Smith, 22, said he was battling a “bit of a depressive episode” when he took the last available place on the Trust’s Making It In Media course run with Ant and Dec. He told the King the two-week course had been transformative — helping him overcome depression and social anxiety, make friends and set him on a path to work on a Netflix show. “Those two weeks would have to be the biggest change, one of the biggest changes in my entire life,” Allman-Smith said, adding that the Trust’s support had also helped his mother.
The King’s Trust said the organisation has helped more than 1.3 million young people across the UK over the past 50 years as part of its work to reduce youth unemployment and support young people into education, training and work. The palace reception drew more than 4,000 guests who were served refreshments including mini scones with blackcurrant jam and clotted cream, chocolate tiffin and elderflower, trout and lemon cream cheese mini bagels. Organisers noted that at a typical summer gathering tens of thousands of items are consumed — around 27,000 cups of tea, 20,000 sandwiches and 20,000 slices of cake.
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Despite the downpour, the mood remained celebratory as beneficiaries, ambassadors and well-wishers mingled on the palace lawns, snapping photos and sharing stories of how the Trust’s programmes had changed lives. The DJ set — brief, rain-soaked and cheerfully informal — provided one of the afternoon’s most unexpected moments, marrying royal pageantry with the charity’s ongoing outreach work.
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