King Charles can take a joke.
The 74-year-old monarch praised the “world-renowned” humor of Brits on Thursday while reflecting on his viral leaky pen mishap last September.
Charles and Queen Camilla attended a dinner on the Mansion House to acknowledge the City of London’s civic institutions and Livery Firms, as well at the town ancient and modern trade guilds.
During an address, Charles praised British residents for channeling humor to beat issues just like the rise of artificial intelligence and climate change.
“The cherished well from which the sound of laughter may be heard — the healing well stuffed with a humorousness laced with an invigorating dash of self-irony. This well flows liberally into all of the others. The British humorousness is world-renowned,” he said.
“It just isn’t what we do. It’s who we’re. Our ability to laugh at ourselves is one in all our great national characteristics. Just as well, you could say, given a number of the vicissitudes I actually have faced with frustratingly failing fountain pens this past 12 months,” he quipped to the enjoyment of the gang.
Charles referenced the 2022 incident where he got frustrated by a dripping pen getting ink throughout his hands at a signing ceremony in Northern Ireland.
First, he signed the fallacious date on the document.
“Is it September the twelfth?” his royal majesty asked an aide on the time, despite a calendar with the date sitting right in front of him.
“Oh God, I’ve put the fallacious date down,” he said after he declared it was the thirteenth.
Camilla then said to him fairly sharply, “You signed the twelfth earlier.”
Charles then got upset about the leaky pen.
“Oh God, I hate this,” he said, after handing the bad pen to his wife.
“I can’t bear this bloody thing! Every stinking time,” Charles told an aide as he and his wife attempted to scrub the mess.
The humorous moment immediately went viral.