She took herself off the rota as a Diamond Jubilee present to herself, with her final appearance in 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n Visiting Dubai at the end of this month will have an upside for the King: he won’t have to attend the Royal Variety Performance<\/p>\n Charles hoped he’d done his last stint in 2016 (the Chuckle Brothers, Lady Gaga and Sting), leaving William and Kate to alternate royal box duties with Harry and Meghan<\/p>\n King Charles is pictured with the Chuckle Brothers at the Royal Variety Performance 2016\u00a0<\/p>\n Charles hosts South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol this month. Will he sing for the King? At the White House earlier this year, he surprised Joe Biden with a rendition of American Pie.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps fortuitously, Prince Philip won’t be present. When glamorous French chanteuse Carla Bruni accompanied her husband Nicolas Sarkozy on his 2008 state visit, Philip suggested she might ‘do a turn’ after the banquet. But the Queen insisted on traditional bagpipes instead.<\/p>\n Why the pressure on the King to deliver a full apology for Britain’s colonial past? Charles might think that Tony Blair has already delivered an appropriate mea culpa when he was cornered by Ghana’s president Kufuor on his 2007 state visit to London.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ‘I have said we are sorry and I say it again,’ he said. ‘[It is important] to remember what happened in the past, to condemn it…’ Sorry might be the hardest word, but it has been uttered.<\/span><\/p>\n Mischievously recalling the protesting days of Dame Vanessa Redgrave, pictured in her prime, Dame Judi Dench describes attending a ‘Ban the Bomb’ protest with her in Trafalgar Square in 1961 when the police arrived. ‘A few officers grabbed hold of Vanessa and tried to throw her in the back of a van,’ remembers Judi. ‘She said, ‘You can’t arrest me, I’ve got a matinee.’ So they let her go!’<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/11\/03\/00\/77346101-0-image-a-25_1698971011747.jpg\")
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