Man Who Egged King Charles Has Been Banned From Publicly Carrying Eggs

“Eggs are funny, eggs have always been funny," the perpetrator told Jezebel in an interview. "Even just the word.”

By Nora Biette-Timmons | November 10, 2022 | 6:30pm

Justice Politics

Man Who Egged King Charles Has Been Banned From Publicly Carrying Eggs

Left: Patrick Thelwell being arrested by police in York on Wednesday. Right: An egg he allegedly threw at Charles and Camilla. Photo:Chris Jackson (Getty Images)

The man charged with throwing eggs at newly minted King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort, during their “walkabout” in York, England, on Wednesday has been banned from carrying eggs in public as part of his bail condition. That is, unless he’s coming back from the grocery store.

“They thought about [it] and said, actually that’s a bit harsh, what happens if he wants to eat some eggs?” Patrick Thelwell said of his bail hearing in a Thursday phone call with Jezebel. His amended punishment stipulates that he must have a receipt if he’s coming back from the grocery store with eggs.

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Though Thelwell thinks “it’s unlikely that I’m going to get stopped” by police while returning from the grocery store, the masters student said he has no particular plans to test the limits of his egg-carrying ban. He’s also now prohibited from being within 500 meters of the king and will appear in court on Dec. 1 to face a charge of disturbing the public order.

Charles—whose teddy bear and toilet seat were nowhere in sight—and Camilla were greeting citizens when they were targeted by the flying eggs, which missed them. Almost immediately, police roughly restrained Thelwell: “There was an officer who had a hand over my mouth, and his thumb, he was just digging it into my eye,” he said. And the crowd began violently attacking him: “They were grabbing my hair and ripping it out in chunks, pushing past the police to lynch me essentially, shouting that they wanted my head on a spike.”

By Thursday morning, Thelwell had also received death threats for, I cannot emphasize this enough, allegedly throwing eggs—famously delicate, lightweight objects that break on the slightest impact. The worst Charles or Camilla could have been left with was a dry cleaning bill, and I’m sure that’s already built into the royal budget.

“There’s a proud tradition of egging monarchs in the UK,” Thelwell said when asked, “Why eggs?” (Queen Elizabeth was egged in 1986 in New Zealand, which is part of the British Commonwealth, but not the United Kingdom itself. Nigel Farage—a pathetic nationalist wannabe Donald Trump who is blessedly not a monarch—was egged in Nottingham in 2014.)

It’s “a nonviolent protest that signals a withdrawal of consent from respecting these outdated structures,” Thelwell said. Plus, “Eggs are funny, eggs have always been funny. Even just the word.” (I agree.) But he didn’t just allegedly do it for the lols: “I don’t believe in kings, I don’t believe in any hierarchies really. It was in protest against this country’s descent into fascism.”

The uninjured, unfazed king later spoke at a ceremony in York marking the unveiling of a statue of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth—the first statue of her to be installed since her death. (Keep that in mind for your future trivia nights.) He is apparently fine.