The Queen showed off her ping-pong prowess when she joined the King at a community centre to celebrate good causes in Middlesbrough.
Charles and Camilla enjoyed their first joint away day since the King’s cancer diagnosis and toured the town where more than a thousand welcomed the couple, with the King walking within a few feet of an anti-monarchy protest.
The King carried out a solo engagement visiting an offshore wind turbine manufacturer where he confessed his skiing days were behind him, while the Queen celebrated literacy and told a hall of school children “reading is so important…if you can read you can do anything”.
Charities and organisations gathered at a community centre to discuss their work with the head of state and his wife who heard about projects to tackle knife crime, support sexual violence victims, empower vulnerable young people and help the integration of asylum seekers.
But in a lighter moment the King’s consort picked up a bat and ball and joined a group of teenagers having an impromptu match.
She is known to like a game of ping-pong and with her table-tennis partner Alesha Hussain, celebrating her 15th birthday on Thursday, took on 14-year-old Kaleb Autsun.
The Queen batted the ball across the net to the 14-year-old and a stop-start rally began with the ball quickly retrieved by helpful watchers whenever any of the players missed the table.
Alesha, who was representing a young carers’ group, said afterwards: “She was good, I didn’t know she liked table tennis.
“We just started playing and it was good fun.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Their opponent Kaleb was impressed with the opposition, saying: “It was nice, that was a new experience because I’ve never seen any of the royal family before.”
