Will Young recalls moving encounter at Buckingham Palace lunch with late Queen

‘Evergreen’ singer recalled moment a butler thanked him for publicly coming out

Will Young has recalled an unlikely encounter he had when he visited Buckingham Palace to have lunch with the late Queen.

The “Evergreen” singer, who won the inaugural Pop Idol aged 22 in 2002 and came out as gay shortly afterwards, was speaking on Jamie Laing’s Great Company podcast when he remembered one of the butlers at the royal household approaching him to thank him for publicly coming out.

Young, now 45, explained that it was unusual to come out publicly at that time, and one butler working at the palace – who he presumed was gay – came up to him and simply said “thank you”.

“I went for lunch with the Queen, and it was eight of us, and I was really nervous,” said Young. “And a lot of the Butlers, people working there were gay men, and I’d just come out.”

“And it was quite a big thing then, you didn’t often get a male pop star at the beginning of the career coming out.

He continued: “And so they were coming up to me in secret and going, and one of them came up and went, thank you so much. And obviously they’re not allowed to talk to you. They’re not allowed to do anything.”

“Obviously they weren’t allowed to do that. And then I went off to the loo, and another one was like, ‘Thank you so much’. I mean, I could cry. It was amazing!”

Young’s comments come just weeks after the singer claimed he was “pressured” to continue competing in Strictly Come Dancing by his team, after he asked to pull out of the competition because he was dealing with extreme agoraphobia.

When he dropped out after three weeks on the BBC show in 2016, Young cited personal reasons.

But speaking with Rylan Clark on his BBC podcast How To Be In The Spotlight about his time on Strictly, Young said: “I tried to pull out of it, but I was sort of pressured to do it.

“It was sort of like ‘Well, if you pull out, the BBC will never work with you again’.

“That was one of the things that was said to me, so I did it, but I knew I wasn’t well enough.”

Young, who was partnered with Strictly-pro Karen Hauer when he was on the show, continued: “You know, when you’re getting flashbacks and all those kind of things, for me, it was agoraphobia.”

Will Young and his partner Karen Hauer on ‘Strictly’ in 2016 (BBC)

“So agoraphobia was really bad for me. So literally throughout that stage, I didn’t even know where I was.

“I’m on that show. If you ever watch it back, I was not even in the room.”

Strictly is currently embroiled in controversy following multiple allegations of abusive and inappropriate behaviour behind the scenes.

Two of the show’s professional dancers, Graziano Di Prima and Giovanni Pernice, have been dropped from its lineup ahead of the new season’s launch this autumn.

In a recent interview with The Independent, Young spoke about how the breakdown he suffered after Strictly – which he traced back to his experiences at boarding school – led to years of therapy as well as visits to a shaman.