She re-created pop history on the Abbey Road zebra crossing in London, but the Duchess of Edinburgh was relieved to hear she wasn't expected to do the same inside the legendary music studios.
Addressing guests at a charity reception where a pianist had been entertaining them, Sophie joked: "I was slightly concerned that when the music turned up, we were going to have to sing and that we were going to clear Abbey Road Studios really quickly."
The Duchess was at the London venue to address Orbis Visionaries, a gathering of staff and supporters of the global blindness prevention charity.
Taking to the stage where The Beatles had recorded, she spoke from the heart about the charity's work across the world. As global ambassador for the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness, Sophie has travelled to India, Bangladesh and Ethiopia with Orbis.
"To be out in the field and to see what Orbis are doing on the ground – delivering services that are truly life-changing for people, many of whom have been suffering for years, to give them their lives back – is absolutely amazing," she said.
"I had the chance to stand in on an operation to correct the eyelids. It is amazing how in the space of minutes, somebody's life is transformed.
"It's not right that there are so many people out there living with these conditions, whether it be blinding trachoma or whether it be from cataracts."
Hear from the Duchess at the event in the clip below...
Sophie, whose daughter Lady Louise Windsor was born with an eye condition, added that she keeps one of the charity's "Seymour" teddy bears on a bathroom chair to remind her of all the children whose sight has been restored by surgeons who are volunteering with or have been trained by Orbis.
The soft toys, which come with a bandage and eye patch, are given to youngsters undergoing surgery to comfort them after their operations and help them to understand the healing process. Around 1.1 billion people live with vision loss globally, yet 90 per cent of cases are avoidable, the charity says.
© Max MumbyLast October, Sophie joined Orbis in Hawassa, Ethiopia, where she met health workers screening for and treating the devastating eye disease trachoma. She also saw teachers assessing children for eye conditions and volunteers helping to identify women and children in need of urgent eye care who would otherwise go without.
Orbis works across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, operating the world's only fully accredited ophthalmic teaching hospital on a plane, the Flying Eye Hospital, which has helped upskill medics in more than 95 countries. More than 90,000 health professionals use the charity’s free platform Cybersight, which helps detect eye diseases in seconds using artificial intelligence.
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