THE TROUSERS!
Did Prince havea secret fling with high flying blonde?
THE Princess of Wales suffered, perhaps unfairly, from being portrayed as a woman with many lovers, while her husband remained faithful to just one.
But was Prince Charles really so devoted to Camilla Parker Bowles that his attention never strayed?
In 1993, after the Prince and Princess had separated, he hired his friend Robert Kime, an interior designer, to expunge all traces of Diana from Highgrove.
And it was Kime who was also responsible for introducing a new unofficial adviser into Charles’s court: a marketing maestro called Susan Eileen Townsend.
A pretty blonde with bright blue eyes, she was the antithesis of the serious-minded men and women around the Prince. She was saucy and stylish, as comfortable in short skirts and a low decolletage as she was in jodhpurs, and she shared his love of Aston Martins.
At 43, Susan was a year younger than Charles. She was also a highly successful businesswoman, having been a founder of Crabtree & Evelyn, with more than 170 shops in six countries.
Her first impression of Charles, when Kime brought her to dinner at Highgrove was that he was ‘ perfectly charming’. The sentiment was clearly reciprocated, because he asked Susan to set up a gift shop at Highgrove in Gloucestershire.
She duly converted a garage on the estate into a shop selling products from Royal Warrant holders. And then the Prince asked her to help out with a new souvenir shop at Buckingham Palace as well.
This new project involved regular meetings with Charles, Kime and ‘Debo’, the Duchess of Devonshire, in the Chinese dining-room at the palace. There, they would examine the various items being suggested for sale in the palace shop.
‘At first [Charles] thought he could veto everything they sold, which was a bit ambitious,’ recalled Townsend (pictured, left, in 1997).
Debo Devonshire would then pitch in, asking: ‘Well, are they cheap?’ When told they were, she’d shake her head and say: ‘There is nothing to be done.’ At which point, the Prince would groan and say: ‘How awful.’
Three years later, Charles sought Susan’s advice again when his Duchy Originals food brand started piling up too much debt. After becoming a director of the brand in 1996, she helped him find new agricultural sources for the foods as well as new manufacturers.
She also persuaded him to try to sell the products at Waitrose. ‘The people who shop at Waitrose were the target market,’ she said. ‘The Prince loved it. He had all the directors at Waitrose to tea at Highgrove.’
Meanwhile, Charles was enjoying Susan’s companionship as well as her advice. Through him, she got to know Princess Anne, and he once invited her to travel with him to Debo’s home, Chatsworth.
As they spent more time together, she learned about the Prince’s quirks, which she remembers fondly. One day, she says, they happened to be driving in his Aston Martin convertible by the gardens across from Buckingham Palace.
‘He frowned and said, “How horrid”. He just hates those rows of red geraniums,’ she said. ‘That will change when he becomes King. But one of the problems is that he has such high taste — so above everyone else.
‘One reason the Queen is so popular is that she is much more ordinary in her tastes. People can relate to her, but he harks back to an earlier, grander era.’
Charles and Susan remained close until Diana’s death in 1997, when they argued over Susan’s decision to close the shop at Highgrove for the week. ‘ I don’t think he thought it through,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that had ever happened before.’
The dispute ruptured their friendship; she resigned from Duchy Originals, moved to Italy and built up a brand of luxury bath and home products.
So, was Townsend’s relationship with Charles romantic?
‘I don’t think we’ll go down that road, really,’ she says nearly two decades later.
‘I used to spend quite a bit of time with the Prince, so there we are. I don’t think I’ll go into it. I don’t mind if you write that. Yes, we were close, but it was a long time ago.’