Richard E. Grant has recalled the then Prince Charles visiting him and his late wife at home while she was terminally ill
(Picture: PA)Richard E. Grant has recalled the special visit by the then Prince Charles to his home as his late wife Joan’s suffered from cancer.
Grant and King Charles III have a friendship dating back 25 years after the royal invited him to be an ambassador for his Prince’s Trust.
The Jack and Sarah star explained how the former Prince of Wales reached out to him weeks before Joan passed away, asking if he could come and see them.
Speaking to journalist Jay Rayner on the latest episode of his Out To Lunch podcast, he said he had been touched by the “generosity” of his celebrity friends as he nursed former dialect coach Joan in her final months.
One of the “most surprising” acts of kindness at that time however had been from the future king.
He said: “Just weeks before Joan died, he contacted us and said could he come and visit? We said yes, and he sat in our garden in this cottage in Gloucestershire where she spent the last eight months of her life and brought a bag of mangos because he knew they were her favourite fruit and sat with her and was very engaged and held her hand.
“My nickname for her was the Kernel, because we got stoned one night about 20 years ago, and she’d woke up in the middle of the night and said, ‘I am the Kernel, why didn’t everybody just do what I tell him to do?’ So, he knew her as the Kernel as well.”
Confirming that their royal guest had been fully aware of the reason behind the nickname when asked by Rayner, he continued: “He said, ‘it’s been an absolute privilege and honour to have known you, Joan’. And she said, ‘well, I’m still here’ which broke the ice and so that was surprising. A man who was as busy as he is to find the time to come and do that.”
Joan died in September 2021 aged 71. They had been married for 35 years.
Out To Lunch with Jay Rayner is available on all major podcast platforms.
