Some royal visits are remembered for their speeches, while others are remembered for moments that were completely unscripted. King Charles III was in Newcastle, Northern Ireland, greeting the people who had gathered on the main street to watch him pass by when a seagull decided to leave its mark on the back of his jacket.
With everyone watching, cameras rolling, and the press stationed nearby, the impact didn’t go unnoticed. In fact, some journalists also received a share of the “gift.”
The highlight of the story isn’t the incident itself, but rather how the king handled it. They pointed out the stain to him; he saw it, and he carried on as if nothing had happened. He kept waving, smiling, shaking hands, and stopping to talk to children, showing no rush to clean himself up.
Later, he joked about it with a woman in the crowd who told him that they had tried to convince him to wear a coat. His response was, “Thank goodness it didn’t land on my head,” a line that says it all about his mood that day.
For some people, having a seagull defecate on you is considered good luck, which, in that context, seemed quite fitting.
Charles changed into a different suit later when he attended a garden party at Hillsborough Castle. There, he and Camilla welcomed members of the community, including a 99-year-old RAF veteran and a runner who carried a teammate across the finish line at the Boston Marathon.