Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles have known each other for many decades, having met in the 1970s. The pair have now been married for fourteen years but their relationship was once quite different. According to author Kitty Kelley, Prince Charles once had a nickname for the now-Duchess. It came at a time when Charles was courting Princess Diana and Camilla was married to her now-ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles, in 1979.
“[Charles] did not hide the fact that Mrs Parker Bowles was back in life,” Kelley quoted Lord Mountbatten’s private secretary John Barratt in her 1997 book The Royals.
“He said she was helping him sort things out. They spent hours together – riding, hunting, shooting.
“She acted as his hostess at dinner parties, and arranged luncheons and country weekends, and naturally, controlled the guest list. Charles called her his Girl Friday.”
‘Girl Friday’ – meaning a female assistant who can be relied upon (a take on Robinson Crusoe’s Man Friday in Daniel Defoe’s novel) – has come to be considered a rather demeaning term, according to some.
Barrett didn’t shy away from his opinions on Camilla Parker Bowles.
According to Kelley, he said: “She was perfect for him – horsey and accommodating.
“Charles is like all the Windsor men, and I include Lord Louis and Prince Philip.
“They like women who look like men. Long legs in riding breeches.”
In a 1995 Panorama interview, Diana memorably told Martin Bashir, in reference to Camilla Parker Bowles, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
Royal author Penny Junor, in her 2017 biography “The Duchess: The Untold Story”, calls the now-infamous interview a “public execution” of the Prince of Wales.
“Camilla watched it at home with her family and laughed at the sheer theatricality of it, as did many who knew the princess,” said Junor.
“She had manipulated Bashir, just as she had (biographer) Andrew Morton, turning her private battle with the prince into a public execution without a thought for her children.”
Diana and Charles’s marriage is said to have begun falling apart in 1985, according to Kelley.
“[Charles] blamed Diana for the open warfare because she had started to talk back,” said Kelley. Among other complaints, Diana is said to have taken umbrage with Prince Charles going on trips, accusing him of wanting to get away from her.
“Usually restrained in public, the Princess let loose in private,” the author said.
“She railed about her husband’s ’toadying’ friends, his preoccupation with polo, his dinner parties with ‘boring old men who smell of cigars,’ and his solitary trips to fish and paint and ski. She said his excursions were simply excuses to get away from her.”