Singer Lionel Richie gets coveted seat at coronation of Britain’s King Charles

LONDON – US star Lionel Richie is among the celebrities handed invitations for King Charles III’s coronation, according to Buckingham Palace, which has kept the guest list tightly under wraps.

Richie, 73, already confirmed as one of the headline acts at a star-studded concert in the grounds of Windsor Castle the day after, will be present in London’s Westminster Abbey for the May 6 coronation, the palace said in a statement.

The four-time Grammy Award-winning singer has sold more than 125 million albums worldwide.

In 2019, he became the first global ambassador for Charles’s charitable Prince’s Trust which supports struggling 11 to 30-year-olds get their lives on track.

A full list of invitees has not yet been published but other celebrities attending, according to a partial list issued by officials on Monday, included Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of British Vogue.

Also invited are Kelly Jones, lead singer of the band Stereophonics, and restoration and recycling champion Jay Blades, presenter of the hit BBC television series The Repair Shop.

An unnamed group of Nobel prize winners also made the list for the event on Saturday which has seen numbers slashed from the 8,000 invited to his mother’s coronation in 1953 to just 2,000.

Rather than stuff the abbey with aristocrats as for previous coronations, Charles has reportedly been determined that the ceremony reflects modern British life.

He is said to have chosen “meritocratic not aristocratic” criteria that have seen invitations sent to representatives of charitable organisations supported by the King and Queen Camilla.

Others included are recipients of the British Empire Medal who have been honoured for good works such as English schoolboy Max Woosey, who raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for a hospice by sleeping in a tent in his garden for three years. AFP