Their Majesties The King and The Queen Consort have been awarded a coveted Gold Blue Peter badge.

The Gold Blue Peter badge is the programme’s highest award, only a handful of which are presented each year.

The King and The Queen Consort received their Gold badges on a visit to the host venue of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool: The King for his environmental work and advocating for young people through the Prince’s Trust, and The Queen Consort for her work highlighting the importance of literacy and reading from a young age.

They received their Gold badges 21 years after Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was awarded one during her Golden Jubilee year in 2002. Previous awardees include Sir David Attenborough, Sir Mo Farah, Greta Thunberg, Steven Spielberg, Mary Berry, Marcus Rashford and The Prince and Princess of Wales, who received a Gold badge when they visited the Blue Peter studios during the show’s 60th anniversary celebrations in 2018.

Viewers can see them being presented with their badges in next week’s Blue Peter Coronation Celebration special (Friday 5 May) at 5pm on CBBC and BBC iPlayer.

Their Majesties were also introduced to some young Blue Peter fans who have carried out a variety of incredible work to earn their badges.

They met Ashar, 12, From Birmingham who has six Blue Peter badges including silver for making a difference in his community and for his volunteering work with St John Ambulance; Eight-year-old Sasha, from Liverpool, who has eight badges, including a green badge for inspiring others to look after nature and for litter picking around her local park. She wanted to see The King on Blue Peter to encourage even more people to look after the environment; and Celyn, 9, from Llanelli, Wales, who has four badges, including the silver badge for kindness and for wanting to share her love of reading with others. She gives out books in little bags to people which includes a hot drink sachet and a message to make them smile.

Editor of Blue Peter, Ellen Evans, says: “It was a real honour to introduce Their Majesties to our Blue Peter fans ahead of the forthcoming Coronation celebrations and for them to hear how they earned their badges. Blue Peter receives over a thousand letters, pictures, competition entries and comments every week so it was also lovely to show them some of the amazing artwork sent in by our viewers.”

The King has made notable contributions on Blue Peter, including in 2018 when he met competition winners who had designed dragon statues for the great pagoda at Kew Gardens, and in 1982 when he was interviewed by Blue Peter about The Mary Rose, showing the audience artefacts from the ship and speaking about its preservation.

Blue Peter’s Coronation Celebration show on Friday has a street party theme and will also feature fun activities and a musical challenge for Joel when he joins the Scottish Royal Marines marching brand.

Blue Peter is CBBC’s weekly flagship factual entertainment programme presented by Mwaksy, Joel, Abby, and Henry the Dog. The show aims to help children find out about the world, inspire people and discover things to do.

Blue Peter is Produced by BBC Studios Kids & Family.