01 September 2023 , 12:27
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Kate Middleton is one of the most famous women in the world, and receiving a coveted invite for a meeting with her is something most of us wouldn't turn down.
However, one famous celebrity didn't brush shoulders with the Princess of Wales on a brief trip to London. Country star Dolly Parton received a lunch invite from Kate at Buckingham Palace but had to turn her down because she "couldn't go".
Speaking to BBC Radio 2, Dolly, 77, said: "This time, Lordy, I even got invited to have tea with Kate but I couldn't even go. I thought it was very sweet and nice of her to invite me and one of these days I'm going to get to do that – that would be great."
Then, in true Dolly fashion, she cracked a joke as to what made her decline Kate's invite. She said: "But she wasn't going to promote my rock album so I had to say no." And while she expressed her love for London, she admits she didn't have enough time as she would have liked to explore due to her gruelling tour demands.
Kate invited Dolly to lunch in London (Tim Rooke/REX/Shutterstock)
Dolly made a joke after telling the story on BBC Radio 2 (Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)She told Claudia Winkleman: "I love the people, the feel of London. I don't unfortunately [get time to sightsee]. I have in the past, me and my band, in a tour bus when we have it planned."
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Despite approaching a six decade-long career in the music industry, Dolly has no plans to retire. "I would never retire. I would hopefully drop dead in the middle of a song on stage someday – and hopefully one I've written – but that's how I hope to go," she told Ken Bruce on Greatest Hits Radio. "I don't have much of a choice in that but in the meantime, I'm going to make hay while the sun shines."
However, the Jolene singer has admitted she has scaled back her schedule in recent years: "I'm not touring anymore but I will continue to do special shows here and there now and then like a long weekend or festival shows. But as far as touring I think those days are pretty much behind me... you have to stay gone so long on a tour to make it productive and prosperous and that's a lot of time at my age – I ain't got no years to waste."
And as for her future plans, she has hopes of being on the small screen: "I want to have my own story called The Life of Many Colours where I have a whole TV series of my life. Stuff that people haven't seen or heard about me and where I come from and how I got to be how and who I am. The bad, the good and the ugly!"