For the second year in a row, Kate Middleton and Prince William made an appearance on BBC Radio 1 for World Mental Health Day, and this year, they got very personal. In an interview that aired on the afternoon show Going Home with Vick and Jordan on Radio 1, the prince discussed having a low tolerance for spicy food during an exchange about their dinner plans for the evening. After they settled on curry, hosts Vick Hope and Jordan North asked if they like their curries spicy or mild.
“I can’t do too much spice, I start sweating,” William said. “It’s not attractive.”
Kate, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same problem. “Whereas I like the spice so I have to sort of cook the curry and then add the spice, extra spice at the end,” she said.
“She has to bring it in gently because otherwise I get too sweaty,” William added. “It’s not a nice sight!”
During the interview, William also hinted at a proclivity for using the eggplant emoji. “Is this a clean thing or is this a family one?” he said when the hosts asked about his most used symbol. “I’ve been told not to say the aubergine so I’ve got to pick something else. It would have been the aubergine but I’m saying now—because I’ve got to be all grown up—it’s the one where the eyes go up and down and the mouth’s out. What’s that one? The slightly crazy one.”
The interview was recorded during a morning visit to Birmingham, where William and Kate dropped in on a series of mental health workshops organized by The Mix, a national support organization for people under 25. They also participated in a forum about mental health moderated by Radio 1’s Nadia Jae, with physician and UK mental health ambassador Alex George, Radio 1 presenter Katie Thistleton, and psychologist Marc Brackett, who is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
Kate also gave a speech where she explained some of the reasons why she and her husband have been so interested in talking about mental health enthusiastically and openly. “It need not have so many negative connotations,” the princess said. “We can choose to see our emotional worlds and mental wellbeing in a different light. We can normalize it and recognize it as something we all have and require as human beings.”
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