Prince William keeps Princess Diana tradition alive

Having the future king of England serve you vegetables isn’t exactly on everyone’s bingo cards.

But Prince William yesterday afternoon popped by a homelessness charity in London – one often visited by Princess Diana – to serve people Christmas dinners.

Leo Scanlon, 39, a regular of The Passage, said the prince aproned up for about an hour to shovel veggies and chat to the roughly hundred people he helped.

Among them was Leo Scanlon, 39, who told the MailOnline about William’s secretive, press-free visit.

He said: ‘When you are homeless you fall to the edge of society quickly and it’s scary how you can become invisible. We become street furniture. You aren’t seen as a person.

‘When you have someone at the top of the game coming down and talking to someone at the bottom, not for a photo opportunity, just because they care. Well, it means a lot.’

William was introduced to the charity by his late mother when he was 11 and has been a regular visitor over the years.

There had been ‘whispers’ that the prince would pop round for the Passage’s Christmas lunch yesterday – he’s a patron of the charity after all.

So Leo was only half-surprised to see the Duke of Cornwall rock up at around 1.30pm, ready to pile up road vegetables for the hour-long service.

‘The Passage canteen can be quite a hostile environment sometimes, there are a lot of people with mental health issues, or who don’t speak any English and get frustrated. It’s quite hard in a small space,’ said Leo.

‘But the way he dealt with it all when he came in was amazing.

‘He was so kind and so polite and spoke to everyone and posed for selfies.

‘When I spoke to him I was so overwhelmed I accidentally swore and he put his ear to my mouth and whispered: “Don’t worry, my language is terrible!”‘

Leo said the prince had ‘no airs and graces’ to him. No one at The Passage in Westminster was even calling Prince William ‘his royal highness’, just ‘William’.

‘A bomb could have gone off in the corner and he wouldn’t have noticed. He just looked you in the eye and you had his full attention,’ Leo added.

Between dishing up veggies, William served someone who quickly got lost in the afternoon rush so wasn’t able to chat.

So when the kitchen closed, the prince went out of his way to track the man down.

‘The way Prince William spoke to all of us, but especially this man, meant a lot and it was so genuine,’ Leo recalled.

‘He was not doing it for a picture opportunity to look good, he genuinely cared what the guy had to say.’

Homelessness in London has more than tripled since 2008, from around 3,472 to 11,9993 in 2023/24.

William, who owns several houses, is leading a five-year project to eradicate homelessness in six locations called Homewards. He launched the scheme alongside The Passage and a raft of other homelessness groups, experts and people.

The heir to the throne has stressed that he wants to use his standing to ‘help people’.

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