Joan Collins has praised King Charles III for his skills on the dancefloor in a tribute to the monarch ahead of his coronation.
The Dynasty star recalled a fond memory about meeting the King for the first time in the Eighties, when he was the Prince of Wales and, at the time, married to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
She met him at a charity ball held by Armand Hammer in Palm Beach, Miami, where they “had a little dance together” that Collins described as “very nice”.
“He’s quite a good dancer!” she told British Vogue, and described the King as “charming”, as well as having a “wonderful voice and a dry, dry sense of humour”
The actor, 89, shared another time that she met Charles at the Safeway Picnic concert in aid of his charity, The Prince’s Trust, in 2002.
She said that the King “loves modern music and was jiving along” to performances by Diana Ross and Shirley Bassey.
Collins predicted that Charles “will be a very good leader” as he prepares to be crowned alongside Queen Consort Camilla on Saturday 6 May.
“He’s learned great instincts from his wonderful mother,” she said. However, the she acknowledged that taking over from the late Queen Elizabeth II is “a hard act to follow” because she was so “supremely loved”.
“But he will be able to climb that mountain, I am sure,” Collins added.
The Empire of the Ants star was born in 1933, and was about 20 years old when Queen Elizabeth’s coronation took place.
She recalled how she spent the day of the ceremony with her friends “galloping to Oxford Street to catch a glimpse of the Queen’s coach”.
“It was so fabulous because it was bright gold going through the shabby old torn streets of London, only five or six years after the war had ended, with bomb sites everywhere,” she said.
“Those were cold, dark days in Britain still, so it was incredibly exciting. Everybody felt that they were at the dawn of a new, young, renaissance world.”
King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla’s coronation is the first to take place since that of his late mother, more than 70 years ago.
The historic occasion will see the royal couple crowned and anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, before they are joined by a grand procession in the journey back to Buckingham Palace.
They will later appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to wave at the crowds, alongside other senior working members of the royal family, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Royal, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.
