The husband of murdered MP Jo Cox has said he was glad he did not take their children to the home of the Duchess of Cornwall in case they destroyed any antiques.

At Clarence House today, her husband Brendan and Camilla, a patron of The Big Lunch, officially launched The Great Get Together, a weekend-long event designed to bring people together within communities.

Addressing the room, Mr Cox said he was going to invite his two children to the event, but joked: "Looking around at all the ornaments I am very glad I didn't.

"It would be a stressful hour of my life running around trying to avoid them destroying a Ming vase or something."

The Great Get Together, which will involve tens of thousands of community get-togethers on the weekend of June 17 and 18, has been put together by The Jo Cox Foundation and The Big Lunch.

The scheme is also being supported and backed by a wide variety of groups - including the Scouts, ParkRun, the RSPB and NSPCC - who were also represented at the launch event.

Calling for a toast to the Great Get Together, Camilla, who was wearing a blue tunic dress, white blouse and dragonfly brooch, said: "May it go from strength to strength."

Turning to Mr Cox, she added: "I hope that wherever Jo is now she will be looking down proudly at seeing what a wonderful job you are doing."

People are being invited to come together with friends, neighbours and strangers for fun and community engaging street parties, picnics, barbecues and bake-off competitions.

Mr Cox said the idea to have the two-day event came from trying to commemorate the death of Ms Cox in a way which captures her values and spirit - "full of energy, full of vitality, full of fun".

"We didn't want it to be this solemn, mournful occasion," he added.

"We decided the best way to think about Jo and celebrate Jo was to bring communities together, get people to share food and celebrate what we have in common."

He added: "We hope everyone will take part, this is a very open thing, we hope it will be everywhere from little villages in rural England to big cities - we hope it will have that scale of reach.

"We just want to make that moment as big as fun and as meaningful as it can be... This would have been exactly the way she would have want to be remembered."

He also revealed that his children are "really excited" that they are going to be having a party for their mother, adding: "They feel that this is a continuation of who their mum was."

Mr Cox said there has not been a single individual or organisation say they don't want to be involved in the event, with "everyone from the Premier League through to the Women's Institute have wanted to be a part of this".

Peter Stewart of The Big Lunch, which is funded by the Big Lottery Fund, said numbers have swelled since it was started in 2009, with more than 8.5 million taking part in the Queen's 2012 diamond jubilee celebrations.

Aiming for a figure of 10 million in June, he said The Great Get Together will not only be a fitting tribute to Ms Cox but is also about having fun over food.

"I think we live in a time where there is so much division. What we do know is that when people do come together, communities get stronger and people feel happier.

"There has got to be a time when we put this division behind us. I never really knew Jo Cox... (but) I believe that is what she stood for and we are really happy to be able to support them."

He said through meeting Ms Cox's husband and family, he got a "huge sense of the values" she stood for.

"Those values need to be taken on and they are pretty well the values that most of us as humans and within Britain, deep down, really have.

"She seemed to me very much like a party animal and a go out and get them (person), and that is what we should do on June 17 and 18."

Celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Big Lunch participants Dianna McDowell, from Northern Ireland, Gordon McClean, from Scotland, and Nageena Khan, from Bradford, were also in attendance.

Oliver said ahead of the launch that "food is everything in bringing everyone together" and The Great Get Together should be a "beautiful weekend".

He added: "I had the opportunity to meet Brendan. I, like most people, was affected by Jo's death and I think a year on this is an opportunity to turn a terrible incident into something positive.

"Everyone seems to be so excited about it, everyone is joining in and it is getting bigger and bigger, and I think it is because everyone needs it."

Mother-of-two Mrs Cox was shot and stabbed by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair in her Batley and Spen constituency days before the EU referendum last June.

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