In November, Prince William will travel to Singapore to attend the third annual edition of the Earthshot Prize, the award he started to honor companies and researchers who are working on solutions to climate change. But in a recent appearance on the YouTube channel Sorted Food, William emphasized exactly how long ago he started the project with a self-deprecating reference.

“I don’t know if you guys have heard about the Earthshot Prize, but it’s an initiative I started about two years ago now, although it’s been about four years in the making. I had hair when it started,” he said. The joke about his receding hairline made the Sorted Food hosts Barry Taylor, Jamie Spafford, and Ben Ebbrell break out in laughter. “It’s designed as an environmental prize tackling the world's greatest environmental problems.” 

William has long had a good sense of humor about his thinning hair. Back in 2014, he and Princess Kate were visiting an agricultural fair in Sydney, when she spotted a tuft of alpaca wool about the same color as William’s hair. One onlooker told the Daily Mail that she put the wool on her husband’s head and said, “You need it more than me.” In 2017, he spoke to a handful of hairstylists on a London engagement, and quipped, “I don’t have much hair, I can’t give you much business.”

In the episode of Sorted Food posted Sunday, William joined the hosts of the show, which spotlights accessible recipes, to show off products from two of the companies that won prizes at the 2022 awards, which took place in Boston. The hosts cooked with a Mukuru Clean Stove and boxed up their leftovers in a NotPla take-out container. Then William joined them on a food truck to serve vegetarian “Earthshot Burgers” to unsuspecting fans, who were shocked to see a prince handing over their lunch. “My brain took, like, three seconds to buffer,” one patron said. “Am I dreaming?”

In May, the Earthshot Prize announced a two-year partnership with YouTube to help promote climate-focused content to viewers. “At The Earthshot Prize we want to incentivize innovation and change to help repair our planet and partnering with YouTube, one of the world’s biggest platforms, allows us to do that on a truly global scale,” said Hannah Jones, Earthshot’s CEO. “We look forward to collaborating on exciting content that will inspire urgent optimism and action and help audiences better understand the climate challenges we face.”