‘The King and Queen Consort are complete allies’
The Coronation will be the most watched event possibly in the history of the world, and you have these two people at the centre of it. The best thing about The King and Queen Consort is that they are complete allies. The pair of them work brilliantly together.
I first met The Queen Consort when I was 16 and she was 17. I visited her grandparents’ house and in the garden I came across Camilla, who was hiding in the bushes, smoking. Years later, when I was on BBC Radio 4’s Just A Minute and the subject came up of ‘My Secret Crush’, I found myself talking about meeting this girl in jodhpurs and an Aertex shirt, smoking a Woodbine. It never occurred to me that Camilla would be listening, but 10 days later, she bumped into my wife at an event and said: ‘Tell Gyles I might have been smoking, but it wasn’t a Woodbine!’
So she has always been fun and anyone who has met her confirms she is very easy to get on with. I have been with her when people have come up and said: ‘Can I have a selfie?’ and she has said, ‘Why not?’ I think that may have had to stop now, but she was totally relaxed about it.
I was lucky enough to host a birthday lunch for her 75th birthday with Dame Joanna Lumley last year. In Camilla’s speech, she mentioned the Duke of Edinburgh and his approach to the role of consort, which was, ‘Look out, look up, don’t look down, don’t look in. Say less, do more, get on with the job.’ She said: ‘That is going to be my maxim.’ And that is what she does. The Queen Consort makes sure it is all working for The King.
The King and Queen Consort are very compatible and have a lot of shared interests: they are both passionate about gardening, words and the theatre. I think one of the reasons people have accepted their marriage is they can see it works for both of them.
She has a good influence on him in that he is a workaholic and she is a good counterbalance to that. They are starting new careers in their mid-70s and I think they’re both quite excited by it. They are outward-looking people. He has been busy all his life and people accept him now because they realise he has been right all along about so many different things – we all talk to our plants now!
The King is a really caring person. I met him at a 70th birthday party for The Queen Consort nearly six years ago. It was just after the Grenfell Tower fire and he was visibly distressed by it. We were talking about it with a group of people and he reminded us that he had been criticising these high-rise blocks in his 20s. He feels deeply about these things.
I think they are both happiest when they are winding down at the end of the day. Their schedules are so busy, they are like ships that pass in the night. So when they do meet, it is, ‘Oh, well here we are and how is it for you?’ It doesn’t matter where they are, as long as they are together. • Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait (Michael Joseph) by Gyles Brandreth is out now