Making the audience a blur: Prince William and his ‘forgotten’ contact lenses

In May 2020 there was a BBC documentary titled Football, Prince William and our mental health. You can watch a video clip. There was an article by Stephanie Petit in People on May 28, 2020 titled Prince William’s secret contact lenses trick helped him overcome ‘anxiety’ about public speaking.

It revealed:

"My eyesight started to tail off a little bit as I got older, and I didn’t use to wear contacts when I was working, so actually when I gave speeches I couldn’t see anyone’s face," Prince William, 37, said. "And it helps, because it’s just a blur of faces and because you can't see anyone looking at you — I can see enough to read the paper and stuff like that — but I couldn’t actually see the whole room. And actually that really helps with my anxiety."

Opinions about blurring the audience varied. At Extra.ie on May 28, 2020 an article by Louise Burne was titled Prince William reveals brilliant trick he used to overcome public speaking fear. But at Woman & Home the same day another article was titled Prince William reveals bizarre trick for overcoming his fear of public speaking.

I think not having eye contact with the audience is a bad idea. If you can’t see them, then you have to depend on someone else to let you know whether people have hands raised to ask questions. The cover story in the December 2013 issue of Toastmaster magazine was an article by Ruth Nasrullah on page 22 titled The Eyes Have It.  

Also, if you are a political figure (like a prince) people may throw things at you (such as shoes or milkshakes) so you need to see clearly in order to duck. An image of an audience from Wikimedia Commons was blurred using a filter in Adobe Photoshop Elements.