Royal commentator says King Charles appeared ‘frail’ during Wales visit

Royal commentator Tom Sykes has said King Charles appeared "incredibly frail" when he met the monarch during a visit to Aberfan in Wales last month, describing the visible effects of his cancer treatment as striking.

Royal commentator Tom Sykes has said King Charles appeared “incredibly frail” when he met the monarch during a visit to Aberfan in Wales last month, describing the visible effects of his cancer treatment as striking.

Sykes, editor-at-large of The Daily Beast, discussed the encounter in a video published on his YouTube channel. He said the King looked markedly different at close quarters from how he appeared in television footage.

“In person, the King looks incredibly frail,” Sykes said.

He stressed that he was not predicting the King’s death or seeking to exaggerate concerns about his health.

“I’m not sensationalising this. I’m not saying I think the King is about to drop down dead or anything like that. I have no reason to doubt my sources. But up close you can really, really see the toll that the treatment has taken on him,” he said.

Sykes said the 77-year-old monarch appeared to have lost weight and hair, and described him as looking “very small”.

“He looks very small. He’s lost a great deal of weight. A lot of hair, a lot of flesh off his face, and he’s just covered in make-up,” he said.

Sykes added that the make-up was less noticeable on camera, saying it helped prevent the King’s appearance from becoming a distraction during public engagements.

“It looks totally fine on camera, I think it’s the right thing to do, I hasten to add,” he said. “It would be distracting if Charles was looking terribly grey or this or that. All the conversation would be about his health.”

He described the experience of seeing the King at close quarters as “absolutely shocking”, saying he appeared “very, very, very old and very, very tired”.

Sykes also said he had been told that the King’s treatment was going well, but did not provide details of his sources.

Buckingham Palace has not commented on Sykes’s observations.