The real Camilla
The Duchess ofcornwall had a colourful life before she got together with Prince Charles...
Prince Charles’ relationship with Camilla and how the scandal of their affair rocked his marriage to Diana is a wellpublicised story.
But before Charles and Camilla fell in love, Camilla had had a colourful life and caused controversy with her party-loving ways, as this Channel 5 documentary reveals.
‘She was rebellious and smoked as a teenager,’ says her childhood friend Broderick Munrowilson. ‘And she was not without her admirers. She was always beautifully turned out and had a lot to say for herself.’
During the 1960s, Camilla threw herself into the party scene. ‘She was famously a party girl in the mid 1960s,’ says royal author Tom Quinn. ‘She might go to three parties a night, five days a week.’
But it was this past that put an end to her six-month romance with Charles after they met through a mutual friend in 1971.
‘The big problem was that everyone, from
Charles’ mentor Lord
Mountbatten up to the Queen, was terrified that Camilla had a past,’ says Tom. ‘In fact she had too many pasts!’
Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973, who allegedly had a reputation as a serial philanderer.
But Camilla’s forthright personality meant she didn’t tolerate his reported womanising without a fight.
‘There was one occasion when Camilla saw Andrew’s car parked outside one of her friend’s flats,’ says royal biographer Penny Junor. ‘She knew exactly why it was there, so she wrote a rude message in lipstick on the windscreen and let the tyres down. She wasn’t a complete doormat!’