day i Thumped prince CHARLES
THE year was 1964 and the Beatles were conquering America, Martin Luther King was winning the Nobel Peace Prize and a nation rejoiced at the birth of the Queen’s fourth child. A world away from such notable celebrations, however, tensions were running rather high on the rugby pitches of Gordonstoun School. Indeed, one inter-house match threatened to spark a minor diplomatic incident involving newborn Edward’s older brother and heir to the throne.
Played out under heavy autumnal skies and freezing rain on their spectacularly misnamed home turf of Sweet Hillocks, the Bruce House boys were becoming increasingly riled by the referee, housemaster of rival team Windmill Lodge.
When a scrum collapsed, all hell broke loose and one boy in the pile of bodies – a young Prince Charles – bore the brunt of the ensuing brawl. Legend has it that the prince suffered a broken nose in the muddy brawl and that the injury was hushed up by the school for fear of scandal.
But one player in the thick of the action that day maintains that while the prince was roughed up, his nose survived intact. As the mayhem unfolded, David Borthwick, scrum-half for Bruce, seized his chance to have a pop at the royal. He said: ‘The scrum collapsed and there was this great big mound of boys and we all jumped in. His head popped up from the bottom and there were a few clenched fists. We all went for him, we all just seemed to pick the same moment. I went for his left earhole, I gave it a good scrunch.’
Mr Borthwick, now 67, who had a reputation for disruptive behaviour, said: ‘I don’t want to brag about it but I couldn’t resist it. I thought, “That’s my contribution to the revolution”.’
But he added: ‘If he broke his nose, then there was no blood and he played on to the end of the match. If it happened, then I think it was some other time. I do remember his ears sticking out far more in those days than they seem to do now. Wouldn’t be surprised if he had them pinned.’
Recalling Charles as ‘a chubby boy with good sturdy legs’, he said: ‘He was very courageous on a rugby pitch. He knew he was on a hiding to nothing and would be singled out for special treatment.’ That ill-tempered encounter half a century ago was the most famous occasion when Mr Borthwick crossed paths with the future king during their time at the public school whose famously physical approach to education Charles came to loathe.
Yet, while he is adamant he never saw the prince’s nose put out of joint, he believes ‘special’ efforts were made to shelter the young blueblood from the almost constant teasing he endured.
He said: ‘Perhaps some members of staff felt a little overawed at having the heir to the throne in their class, but he was very rarely punished. I can only remember him being on punishment drill twice. And I was there almost every week so I should know!
‘He was supposed to have got double pneumonia after a camping expedition in July 1964, although I was a bit suspicious of it because I was in the sanatorium at the same time and he didn’t seem to have any difficulty breathing.
‘And we were not supposed to know, but nearly every Saturday afternoon his detectives would whisk him away to Balmoral, but he was always back by the evening service on the Sunday.
‘I think it was all just to give him some respite from the attention he got at Gordonstoun.’
More than 50 years on from those dreich afternoons galumphing round muddy playing fields near the Moray coast, it is immediately clear that the two Old Gordonstounians’ fortunes have taken markedly different turns.
A former ‘guardian’, or head boy, Prince Charles, has carried on his life of privilege, enhanced with additional pampering now that the spartan childhood diet of early morning runs and cold showers is off the menu.
Cambridge University was followed by a stint in the Royal Navy and then decades of royal duty, leavened by polo parties and skiing holidays.
Deep baths scented with Floris oils and large fluffy white towels are the order of the day now. Handmade Turnbull & Asser shirts and £2,000 bespoke suits made for him by Anderson & Sheppard in Savile Row have replaced the uncomfortable shorts.
By contrast, entering Mr Borthwick’s shabby one-bedroomed former council home in the Scottish Borders, it
...but definitely didn’t break his nose. And after our uproarious days together at Gordonstoun, how our lives have taken very different paths, says schoolmate
scarcely seems possible that he once rubbed shoulders with royals and future captains of industry, celebrated authors and journalists. Then, he counted the future author William Boyd and the BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen as school friends.
Now, his days are spent as a semirecluse, chain-smoking roll-ups, although the scraggy beard, unkempt hair and faded Dennis the Menace T-shirt are somewhat at odds with his well-modulated vowels.
A thick film of cigarette tar coats the walls in a sickly hue of brown and everywhere is a clutter of curios, dusty bookshelves and unread newspapers. Buckingham Palace, it ain’t.
By his own admission, he has struggled hard with life; he talks matter-of-factly about how depression, diagnosed only latterly, dogged his efforts to pin down a stable career and home life. His own experience of Gordonstoun ought to have been as miserable as Charles’s, but despite constantly being in trouble, he loved the school.
‘I went to Gordonstoun because my father’s work meant he was forever moving around the country,’ he explained, his nicotine-stained fingers fiddling with a brass lighter.
‘I had a wonderful time there, but not for the right reasons. I suspect I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. My first report aged seven at the prep school linked to Gordonstoun called Wester Elchies said, “I cannot understand how this little boy can get himself into so much trouble”.
‘I was never unhappy at Gordonstoun, although I was constantly punished. The teachers always said I took my punishment very well.’
Charles, however, was in despair at the place he termed ‘Colditz with kilts’. In one letter, he wrote: ‘It’s such hell here, especially at night. The people in my dormitory are foul. They throw slippers all night or hit me with pillows or rush across the room and hit me as hard as they can, then beetle back again.’
Mr Borthwick is familiar with the stories: ‘There are some people who just cannot thrive at a boarding school and I think if that’s the case then it is unfair of the parents to persist in sending the boy there.’
He admits to some empathy with his rugby nemesis, recalling how Charles was ‘a very gifted mimic and great actor’. The prince’s unofficial mentor Eric Anderson, an assistant housemaster who was later Tony Blair’s headmaster at Fettes and Charles’s sons’ at Eton, saw great potential: ‘Eric cast him as Macbeth and Charles received praise from many critics’.
Not everyone was so impressed. Prince Philip guffawed loudly as he watched his son playing at being a king, later telling a tearful Charles that he ‘sounded like The Goons’.
AS far as Mr Borthwick was concerned, such trials were par for the course: ‘I have no argument with the way the place was run. The morning bell went at 6.55am and everyone got up for a run in the worst of the Grampian weather in tiny shorts.
‘It was all to do with the founder Kurt Hahn’s ideas about building character. It was tough but it toughened us as well. We had to wear shorts without pockets because shorts made us run up the stairs rather than walk and the lack of pockets stopped us from slouching. We all wore them from first years to sixth formers with great hairy legs pounding up the stairs.’
He watched a recent documentary about the school and could barely identify his alma mater. ‘Everything is done for them. It is just a holiday camp for rich kids now.’
Although he accepted the regime, it was less accepting of him and Mr Borthwick was suspended for four terms between the ages of ten and 11 for persistent disruption in class.
‘I was just constantly playing the class comedian but because it was nothing dishonest or criminal they couldn’t expel me. I regret the disruption I caused for other pupils and I hope it didn’t damage their education too much.’
He admits his parents were beside themselves with anger over his behaviour. But, his late father, also David, a director at Phillips Auctioneers, who later became a Conservative councillor, realised his son benefited from the regime imposed by Gordonstoun and was keen for him to remain there.
Mr Borthwick said: ‘If you went to Gordonstoun as an ambitious student you could have made something of yourself. But for me that was so unattractive. I didn’t feel I wanted to do anything but have fun.’
The staff offered him a position of responsibility as a ‘white stripe’, or junior prefect, in a bid to draw him back into the school system, but he just let the junior boys ‘run riot’.
Eventually, he walked out of school aged 17 when the headmaster, Robert Chew, refused to allow him to leave three days before the end of term to take up a temporary Christmas casual job with the Post Office. That was December 1965.
After the Post Office, he worked as a lab technician in Edinburgh before meeting his future wife, Joan. They moved to London, where they wed in 1972. He found a job as a medical research assistant at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, until an emergency kidney operation appeared to spark the onset of his depression. The severity of the condition caused his marriage to collapse and he found himself unemployed. He later found work as a milkman in Brixton before his father helped him secure a job with Phillips Auctioneers, where he spent three happy years reorganising the model soldiers and toys department before his worsening mental state led to the firm letting him go in 1980.
Even as the Prince embarked on his turbulent marriage to Lady Diana Spencer the following year in St Paul’s Cathedral, Mr Borthwick’s own life was falling apart. Eventually, he moved north to be near his parents in Kelso. His family, including his 96-year-old mother Cynthia, chipped in the £34,500 he needed to buy his rented semi-detached house from the local housing association.
‘These are just the circumstances of my life,’ he said. ‘I live comfortably enough on my state pension and within this room I have everything I need, including my cat Binky to keep me company.
‘You’re lucky you got me on a good day. Sometimes I find it too hard even to get out of bed. I lose interest in everything and think, “What’s the point?” It’s a recurring theme for me that I don’t think I have achieved anything in my life.’
Is that a question Charles ever ponders as he waits patiently to begin the only job he has spent his whole life to date in training for? Mr Borthwick insists: ‘He has achieved a lot with his privileged position.
‘He really wants to be king – it is betrayed by his manner. But his mother could go on for another ten years by which time Charles will be 77. I suspect his greatest achievement might be making it to his coronation, although I won’t have any special plans to watch it.
‘Good luck to him. I feel he must have lived at least as troubled a life as I have, but I wouldn’t swap places with him for anything.’
Even with those long, miserable Gordonstoun years, Prince Charles would doubtless agree the feeling is mutual.