From dating Prince Harry to a tawdry reality TV show
She’s the Fettes girl who works for Diana’s landmine charity... so why IS Camilla appearing on lurid Love Island?
‘People will be surprised I’m doing it’
ON a hot summer’s day in the August of 2014, a sleek luxury yacht set sail from the French Riviera playground of St Tropez. On board was Prince Harry – who had organised the trip as a celebration for his upcoming 30th birthday – and a handful of close friends, including Ben Goldsmith and his then fiancée Jemima Jones.
But as the champagne flowed and the yacht cut through the waves of the sparkling Ligurian Sea, all eyes were on the petite, bright-eyed brunette by Harry’s side, a beautiful young Scottish woman named Camilla Thurlow.
Miss Thurlow and the Prince had first been spotted together some weeks earlier at the exclusive London nightclub Tonteria, owned by the Prince’s best friend Guy Pelly.
Only a few months after Harry’s split with English actress Cressida Bonas, Miss Thurlow was the first woman Harry had been seen with publicly – and hopes for their relationship were high.
‘It’s a sign that he’s really smitten with Camilla that he feels comfortable to invite her away with friends he’s known for years,’ a source revealed of the St Tropez jaunt at the time.
Another remarked that Harry was ‘keen to settle down’ and ‘thinking about what he wants in life’.
Certainly the pair, who were reportedly introduced by Harry’s cousin Princess Beatrice, seemed eminently well suited.
At 25, Thurlow was just the sort of accomplished young woman prone to catching the Prince’s eye.
Brought up near Dumfries, she was educated at Edinburgh’s prestigious Fettes College and represented Scotland at lacrosse.
She had a job working for the HALO Trust, the landmine charity with which Harry’s own mother was so closely associated, and had spent time working on landmine clearance projects in Cambodia.
As Harry approached his 30th birthday and appeared ready to tame his playboy ways, Royal watchers were convinced the attractive, well-educated humanitarian who shared a name with the Prince’s stepmother might just be ‘the One’.
Three years on, Harry’s romance with Miss Thurlow is but a distant, sun-kissed memory.
He is now happily coupled up with stunning American actress Meghan Markle – many believe he will propose to her before the year is out – while Miss Thurlow is, well, appearing on a low-rent television programme on ITV2 named Love Island.
The show, for the uninitiated, is the sort of grubby reality TV parents must fervently hope that their offspring never have cause to appear on.
Its basic premise centres on a group of single men and women left together in a holiday villa in Mallorca, their every waking (and bedtime) moment documented on camera.
Relationships are encouraged, with individuals forced to choose someone to ‘couple up with’ from the start, and several previous contestants have turned the raunch factor up to 11 after dark in a bid for popularity (viewers vote weekly on who to keep and who to ‘dump’).
Last year the show became notorious after the reigning Miss Great Britain Zara Holland had sex with another contestant, Alex Bowen, on camera. This prompted the pageant’s organisers to strip her of her crown on the grounds that she ‘did not uphold the responsibility expected of the title’.
All in all, it is enough to make Celebrity Big Brother look like Jackanory.
And so, it seems prudent to ask, what is a nice girl like Camilla Thurlow doing on a trashy television show like this?
Even she seems unsure. In an interview only days before the show airs, Miss Thurlow admitted: ‘I am afraid of exposing myself emotionally.
‘I think a lot of people will be surprised this is something I am doing and in a way I am surprised.
‘But I am that type of person that my friends don’t know if I am coming or going.
‘I am extreme – I want to push myself out of my comfort zone.’
Certainly Miss Thurlow, now 27, has led an unconventional, if interesting, life.
She grew up in Holywood, a bucolic village near Dumfries, and has three siblings – a younger brother Rupert, 25, who went to Oxford; a younger sister Connie, 23, also a keen lacrosse player; and an older sister Sophie, 29, who got married last year.
Her father Robert is a vet and runs his own practice in Dumfries where his wife Deborah works as an assistant.
At school at Fettes – whose pupils once included former prime minister Tony Blair and actress Tilda Swinton – Miss Thurlow distinguished herself both athletically and academically. She was a prefect and head of house who gained four As at AS level and 3 As at A Level.
She also represented Scotland in the Under-19 World Lacrosse Championships in Canada and was awarded Outstanding Sportswoman of the year at the school.
So far, so jolly hockey sticks.
It was in her first year at Loughborough University, where she studied sport and exercise science and emerged with a first class degree, that her more outrageous side first asserted itself.
Entering a Miss Earth beauty pageant (which bills itself as having an environmental twist) she was crowned Miss Edinburgh in front of an admiring crowd.
‘It’s a great achievement, especially because it’s a beauty pageant with a cause,’ she said at the time.
‘I am passionate about environmental issues and I am working on a project to encourage university students to be more eco-friendly and energy efficient.’
After university, and despite earning her qualifications in sports science, she took a job with the HALO Trust.
The charity, based in Dumfries, was brought to international attention in 1997 when Princess Diana walked through a minefield in a bullet-proof jacket emblazoned with the Trust’s logo.
Its daring humanitarian work appealed to the adventurous young Miss Thurlow, and since joining the charity she has spent much of her time abroad.
This has included an 18- month stint in Cambodia and several months working in Afghanistan, a trip from which she only returned in January.
It is a work schedule that leads to an unconventional method of socialising whenever she returns home.
‘I do have a bit of a wild side,’ she admits.
‘I think it’s more like I was having these short stints at home. I’d come back for a couple of weeks so you cram six months’ worth of catching up into one night, so you’ve got six girls having cocktails, going out dancing afterwards.’
She is upfront about the dangers of her job.
‘I work in humanitarian explosive ordinance disposal,’ she says.
‘It centres on mine clearance, going to countries where there’s been conflict but there are still mines around.
‘It’s about finding them and disposing of them.
‘The standard operating procedures are very well thought out and if you follow the rules you’re going to be fine.
‘It’s obviously dangerous and there have been people injured conducting that kind of work but at the same time it’s safer than it sounds.
‘My mum is so laid back. I’ve been going to such places and people say, “Aren’t you worried?”, but she says that I have no imagination so I don’t think about it until it happens.’
Imagination or not, it is perhaps this gung-ho spirit that first attracted Prince Harry, a man who, as a decorated soldier and war veteran, is no stranger to hostile environments.
Miss Thurlow says she tried not to let the press attention during their relationship – even American gossip bible Vanity Fair ran a profile – get to her.
‘I don’t want to say it didn’t stress me out, but there were bigger things going on – not just with my family but with the world, and you have to take that and think that in a few days that’s not going to be the biggest thing,’ she says.
‘Everyone was so lovely to me and I went back to work soon afterwards – so I was abroad and the work is such that you don’t have time to dwell on your own emotions.’
She admits now that when
‘I do have a bit of a wild side’
she met Harry she was not ready for a relationship, even with a prince. ‘I was in a place where I knew exactly what I wanted to do workwise,’ she says.
‘It sounds awful. I was going through a selfish moment and I knew what I wanted to achieve so everything was about that. ‘I didn’t want to give that up.’ So will Love Island be the place where she might finally find her Prince Charming? Don’t bet on it.
Although Thurlow declares she is ‘an open-minded person’ some of her fellow contestants may test even her limits.
There is 26-year-old northerner Dom Lever, who declares ‘sex is always good on the beach’, and a 21-year-old hairstylist, Kem Cetinay, who says his long hair is just perfect for playing with in bed.
Then there is 31-year-old Marcel Somerville, a former member of short-lived boy band Blazin’ Squad who claims he’s ‘not sure’ how many women he has slept with.
And there is also the show’s reputation for encouraging contestants to fall into bed with each other.
As well as last year’s Miss Great Britain scandal, 19-year-old Emma-Jane Woodham also shocked fellow contestants.
After repeatedly saying she would not be intimate with anyone during her stint on the show, she went on to have full intercourse with 28-year-old Terry Walsh in front of the cameras – and just about everyone else on the programme – in the communal bedroom. Miss Thurlow says: ‘It’s so interesting that it immediately goes to that level of, “Will you have sex on TV?”
‘At the moment I’m so focused on, “Will I meet someone who I like and who likes me back?”
‘First I want to see if there’s a connection. I’m not prudish, but I don’t want to say I’ve seen it all.’
Awkwardly, the show is presented by Caroline Flack, another former squeeze of Prince Harry. ‘I hope it’s not weird,’ Miss Thurlow says. ‘I’m excited to meet her. She’s a great role model. I don’t know if she would want to talk about it. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’
She admits she would rather not talk about her relationship with Harry while on the show.
‘If someone on the show asks about it… well I don’t really talk about exes anyway,’ Miss Thurlow says.
‘I don’t like that you’re speaking for both parties and I’m quite private about that sort of thing.
‘I’m so unsuccessful at dating. I’ve never worked out what the issue is. I’d love to blame it on that – I only date princes you see!’
It is doubtful, it must be said, that she will find one on Love Island.
Miss Thurlow however, seems hopeful.
‘I am getting to the age where my friends are settling down and starting to have really serious boyfriends and I have got left behind, which is fine – but it would be lovely to meet someone,’ she says.
‘I know this isn’t the conventional way of finding love but I am not a conventional kind of person.’
So it would seem. One thing is for sure, however. It all seems a very long way from St Tropez.
‘It would be lovely to meet someone’