As Prince William greeted locals outside England’s Aspray Arena, he was stunned to see one resident with bright red locks.
“Look at your hair! It’s fantastic,” William, 42, jokingly quipped on Tuesday, March 11, during a walkabout, per social media footage. “I wish I had hair like that, amazing!”
According to William, he “has the Charles.” (The Prince of Wales is the eldest son of King Charles III and his late ex-wife, Princess Diana.)
William visited an FA Referee Training Course at Aspray, which is the home of Sporting Khalsa FC in Willenhall, England. The visit was part of the prince’s duties as patron of the Football Association to highlight its “Reflective and Representative” campaign to recruit more individuals of color as referees.
William, who debuted a scruffy goatee in summer 2024, has long been a good sport when it comes to his receding hairline.
“I don’t know if you guys have heard about the Earthshot Prize, but it’s an initiative I started about two years ago now, but it’s been about four years in the making,” he quipped in a July 2023 YouTube video. “I had hair when it started.”

Several months earlier, William’s brother, Prince Harry, made a pointed dig at his sibling’s hairline in his Spare memoir. Harry, 40, wrote about William’s “alarming baldness” and quipped that his resemblance to Diana was “fading with time.”
“In some ways he was my mirror, in some ways he was my opposite,” Harry wrote in the book published January 2023. “My beloved brother, my archnemesis, how had that happened?”
Harry later defended writing about Williams’ hair loss.
“I don’t see it as cutting at all,” Harry said in a 60 Minutes sit-down. “My brother and I love each other. I love him deeply. None of anything I’ve written, anything that I’ve included is ever intended to hurt my family.”
William and Harry have been estranged since the Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped down from their duties as senior working royals in 2020. William, meanwhile, has not publicly addressed the alleged falling-out or Spare accusations.