Will Young recalled his unlikely experience at Buckingham Palace in a candid and wide-ranging new interview on Tuesday.
The Pop Idol singer, 45, opened up about what it was like having lunch with the Queen when he revealed a surprising detail.
Speaking on Jamie Laing’s Great Company podcast this week, he opened up about coming out following his rise to fame after the show in 2002.
Will publicly announced he was gay just after winning the show amid reports that a newspaper was planning to out him.
During the chat, he spoke about having lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace at the time and claimed that “a lot of the butlers were gay.”
Will Young recalled his unexpected experience at Buckingham Palace in a candid and wide-ranging new interview on Tuesday (photo from 2001 on Pop Idol)
The Pop Idol singer, 45, spoke on Jamie Laing’s Great Company podcast this week and discussed what it was like having lunch with the Queen.
Will said that at the time coming out was unusual, but that many of the employees who worked there approached him to talk about it.
He explained: “I went to lunch with the Queen, there were eight of us and I was very nervous. A lot of the Butlers and the people who worked there were gay men, so I had just come out.”
‘And it was a big deal back then, it wasn’t often that a male pop star at the beginning of his career came out. It just wasn’t a big deal.
“And then they came up to me secretly and said, and one of them came up to me and said, thank you very 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 to the bathroom and another one said, ‘Thank you so much.’ I mean, I started crying. It was unbelievable!”
This comes after Will was forced to apologise last week after swearing during an appearance on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch.
The star left presenters Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy in shock after turning red as he recalled an incident at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Will recalled sitting in the front row of a stand-up show and discovering that the comedian’s jokes were all at his expense.
He also spoke about coming out after his rise to fame following the show in 2002 and claimed that “a lot of the butlers were gay” at Buckingham Palace.
This comes after Will was forced to apologise last week after swearing during an appearance on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch.
Saying: “Most of his show was about me, and obviously, he probably wasn’t very nice to me, and I was in the front row.”
She said, “I don’t know what to do because my show is making fun of Will Young and Will Young is sitting in front of it.”
Presenter Tim quickly stepped in and turned to the camera saying: “I must apologize for using that word.
Realizing his mistake, Will put his hands to his mouth in horror and screamed: “Oh, sorry, I’m so sorry! Is that a bad word? Was it? I’m so sorry.”
This comes after the singer claimed he felt “pressured” to continue on Strictly Come Dancing after threatening to quit the show due to his severe agoraphobia.
He left the BBC show in 2016 and in a new interview claimed he was warned the channel would “never work with him again” if he decided to walk away from the show.
At the time, Will cited “personal reasons” and “anxiety” as the reason for his and fellow cast member Karen Hauer’s departure from the show. After the third week, she revealed that she entered therapy after considering suicide in the wake of her departure.
However, speaking to Rylan Clark on his BBC podcast How to be the center of attention Will revealed: ‘I tried to back out, but I was put under a bit of pressure to do so.’
“It was like, ‘Well, if you walk away, the BBC will never work with you again.'”
‘That was one of the things they told me, so I did it, but I knew it wasn’t good enough.’
MailOnline has contacted BBC representatives for comment at the time.
She continued: “You know, when you have flashbacks and all that kind of stuff, for me, it was agoraphobia.”
“Agoraphobia was really bad for me. Literally, during that whole stage, I didn’t even know where I was. ‘I’m on that show. If you ever watch it again, I wasn’t even in the room.'”
“People were messaging me saying, ‘This isn’t good, you’re not feeling well,’ but I tried to get out. I was so agoraphobic I could barely get to the studio to rehearse.”
Will left the show after his Bollywood-themed salsa dance in which he performed Jai Ho, explaining: “Even though the Bollywood dance was good, I sometimes rewatch it because I’m so proud of it.”
“I was like, ‘No, no, this isn’t going to work, I’m not doing this anymore. ’ Literally after that night.”
‘Also, people were pressuring me for money… I didn’t necessarily have the most supportive people behind me at that stage.’
Elsewhere, Will also spoke about his relationship with his late twin brother, revealing that she confronted him because fame turned him into a “machine.”
Will’s twin, Rupert, took his own life in 2020 after years of battling alcoholism, however, before he died he told the singer that he didn’t understand why he had become so “cold” and “steely”.
Will said: ‘Maybe I became a bit too harsh and I remember my late brother saying to me, ‘You’ve become a bit cold’ because I think I was very closed off to that.
“I remember it was very sad. I started crying because he was crying. I said, ‘I don’t understand what happened.'”
“I think I was very focused in my head. I was thinking, ‘You have to get through these five years to have a career.'”
“I think all that turned me into a kind of machine. I wanted to be a famous singer since I was four years old (and then) my first concert was at Wembley.”
Will previously spoke about his devastation at Rupert’s death and the family’s pain in dealing with his alcoholism.
The star left presenters Simon Rimmer and Tim Lovejoy in shock after he turned blue as he recalled an incident at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
It came after the singer claimed he felt “pressured” to continue on Strictly Come Dancing after threatening to quit the show due to his severe agoraphobia.
He told BBC Breakfast: ‘I miss my brother, he was my twin and my best friend, but I don’t miss the alcoholic.
‘I don’t think alcoholism is talked about enough and it’s important to talk about what it’s like to live with someone who has alcoholism in the family and what that can do to a family.
“It was difficult, but it’s amazing what we do for the love of people. I just didn’t want my brother to die. In the end I wasn’t able to keep him alive and that’s part of my grieving process.”
Great Company with Jamie Laing is available on all podcast providers.
