The Princess of Wales showed her flirty side as she joked the chair of Iceland was looking ‘super fit’ as he prepares to climb Mount Everest for charity.
A second clip of Kate, 41, and Richard Walker, chatting in the aisle of the supermarket store in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has been posted on Mr Walker’s Instagram account following their chat last month as part of her crusade in improving early years development.
In the clip, which is a continuation of their initial conversation about how businesses can help people onto the career ladder as part of the Shaping Us campaign, Mr Walker revealed he is undertaking the charity climb of the Nepalese mountain in memory of his late mother, Lady Walker.
When Kate asked why he was undertaking the enormous physical feat, he revealed his mother had died after suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s, when she was just 63 years old.
Kate joked: ‘So that’s why you’re looking super fit!’
Mr Walker explained that, after his mother was first diagnosed 12 years ago, he and his father first tried to climb Mount Everest and managed to reach the halfway point, raising £1 million for charity.
He joked: ‘We were exactly the sort of people you hear about who have no business being on the mountain.’
Kate laughed and replied: ‘Love that!’ and added it was ‘amazing’ that they had raised so much money.
The Iceland boss added he wanted to raise another £1 million with a view to setting up a centre that would specifically support people who have dementia – particularly forms of the disease that are less common.
The mother-of-three said: ‘I am so sorry for your loss, but I’m sure she would be so proud; not only of what you’re doing here in Iceland but also of your ambition for the future as well.
‘So, very exciting times ahead for you – if not a little bit terrifying!’
The video clip was the second part of a chat between the royal and the Iceland boss last month as part of the Shaping Us campaign from the Princess’s Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood.
In the first part of the chat, the pair discussed how businesses such as Iceland can aid early years development for children so they can build skills that will help them excel in their careers in later life.
During the conversation, she discussed with Mr Walker how businesses can support children and their carers to help set the foundations for key employability skills ‘in the earliest years of our lives’.
In the clip, Kate tells Mr Walker: ‘You hear time and time again that these soft skills, you know, the creativity, the collaboration, the critical thinking, the flexibility, the resilience.
‘You know, these are things that you’d hear that businesses are looking for and it’s really interesting seeing how, actually, so often, the foundations for those skills are built in the earliest years of our lives.’
Mr Walker added: ‘Looking at the Shaping Us campaign and reading some of the science behind it, it really challenged my thinking and it made me think what more we can do, personally as a parent, but also actually as a business.’
A nodding, smiling Kate added: ‘That’s the thing, is that so many of your employees but also customers, their parents, their grandparents, we all know that it’s important to look after their wellbeing because those are the people that are raising children today.’
She later said: ‘It’s really important that all of us are supporting the most vulnerable in our communities and particularly now, yes, when they’re all struggling, community support is needed now more than ever.’
