Will Young has revealed Buckingham Palace butlers "thanked" him for coming out as gay.
The singer had lunch with Queen Elizabeth II and discovered he had a number of fans within the palace.
Will, 45, described his experience in an interview with Jamie Laing on the Great Company podcast.
"I went for lunch with the queen, and it was eight of us, and I was really nervous. And a lot of the butlers, people working there, were gay men - and I'd just come out," Will, who publicly came out as gay in 2002, recalled.
"And it was quite a big thing then, you didn't often get a male pop star at the beginning of the career coming out. It just wasn't big."
He explained that while palace employees were not permitted to speak to guests, several staff members approached him secretly to express their appreciation.
"They were coming up to me in secret," he said. "One of them came up and went, 'Thank you so much'. And obviously they're not allowed to talk to you. They're not allowed to do anything."
Will became emotional as he recollected one staff member going so far as to initiate a conversation in the palace toilets.
"I went off to the loo, and another one was like, thank you so much," he said. "I mean, I could cry. It was amazing!"
