Fans of the sustainability-focused charity the King’s Foundation are abuzz this weekend, after retired soccer great David Beckham was announced as its latest ambassador. All it took was a royal conversation about the birds and the bees.
Beckham, whose wife Victoria Beckham has transitioned from Spice Girls stardom to life as a well-respected fashion designer, retired as a player in 2013. Since then, he’s dabbled in team ownership, gotten additional tattoos, and filmed himself doing partially clothed push-ups. As documented on his Instagram account, he’s also become a bit of of a beekeeper.
The athlete is confident enough in his bee care duties that at a meet and greet last year, David Beckham presented King Charles III with a pot of homegrown honey. “I made some honey for you. It comes from my bees in Oxfordshire,” said the footballer to the King.
“Really?” Charles responded “Well, I’ll have to swap it with the one that I do.”
That’s right, the King also makes his own honey, as he tends the bees at at his Highgrove House country home in Tetbury. According to the royal family’s official website, Clarence House is also home to two beehives, and Buckingham Palace boasts four. (You might recall those colonies from the headlines of fall, 2022, when palace beekeeper John Chapple informed both groups that Queen Elizabeth II had died.)
One wonders if last year’s honey swap created a sticky bond between the two, ad the pair came together again last month at Highgrove Gardens, a statement from the King’s Foundation reads. After Beckham saw “first-hand the charity’s impactful education programmes that take place at specialist workshops on site,” the athlete decided to partner with Charles’s charity, which seeks to fight the climate and natural resource crisis through education and training.
“I’m excited to be working with The King’s Foundation and to have the opportunity to help raise awareness of the charity’s work,” Beckham said in a statement. “I’ve always been keen to help young people to expand their horizons and I’m particularly looking forward to supporting the Foundation’s education programmes and its efforts to ensure young people have greater access to nature.”
“Having developed a love for the countryside I’m also on a personal mission to learn more about rural skills which is so central to the Foundation’s work. It was inspiring to hear from The King about the work of His Majesty’s Foundation during my recent visit to Highgrove Gardens – and compare beekeeping tips!”
Beckham is actively hoping to be offered a knighthood, reports the Mirror, so an appointment like this could help move that aspiration forward. Meanwhile, an affiliation with the celebrity could help rehab the King’s Foundation’s image after a 2021 “cash-for-access” scandal. According to a report by the Guardian, a representative of the group—then known as The Prince’s Foundation—was offering dinners with Charles in exchange for hefty donations. Charles was reportedly unaware of the alleged scheme, and after an investigation, Metropolitan police declined to take action.
This weekend’s announcement adds The King’s Foundation to Beckham’s already-long list of promotional partnerships. The celebrity was also announced as the global ambassador for Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform AliExpress last week. According to the Guardian, “He is also an ambassador for Tudor watches, Tempur mattresses, Unicef, and Nespresso coffee machines, and he also fronts a Walkers crisps ad.”