The Duchess of Cornwall’s son “doesn’t know” if she’ll be known as Queen Camilla when husband Prince Charles is crowned king.
Tom Parker Bowles – the duchess’ eldest child with ex-husband Andrew Parker-Bowles – can understand why his mother’s future title has been the subject of much speculation but he insisted the matter of how she’ll be addressed when her spouse eventually takes the throne has yet to be decided.
Speaking to The Times newspaper, he said: “I honestly don’t know if Mum will be called queen. That hasn’t been decided. There are lots of interesting Sky documentaries about that I’m sure, but I honestly don’t know if that’s true.”
When Charles and Camilla got engaged in 2005, royal officials announced his wife-to-be would be known as Princess Consort when the prince eventually takes the throne, but there has been speculation in recent years that she may be titled Queen Consort instead.
Elsewhere during the interview, the 46-year-old food critic praised his royal stepfather as “sweet and gentle” and “ahead of his time” but insisted he wanted to involvement when it came to repairing the reported rift between Charles and his youngest son, Prince Harry.
Tom said: “I stay out of that. That’s nothing to do with me.”
And Tom insisted he hadn’t watched Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey.
He said: “I wasn’t around. What can I say? Families are never easy but they’ll work it out in the end.”
But one royal-themed programme he has seen is ‘The Crown’, which he insisted is “complete b*******”, though it hasn’t upset him.
He said: “’The Crown’ is beautifully filmed and beautifully acted but complete b******* mostly. I saw a bit with my dad and thought, ‘God, you’ve got him wrong,’ but I would say that, wouldn’t I?”
“If you got angry then you’d really be in trouble. All the shit that’s been thrown at my mother and father in the past. You’ve got to take the good with the bad. Worse things happen at sea, I always say.”
And the writer was moved to tears watching Prince Philip’s funeral on TV last month.
He admitted: “I really blubbed during the ‘Last Post’.
“I didn’t know Prince Philip at all but it was all very moving. The clear blue sky, the music… We’ve lost so many due to Covid it also felt like a chance to mourn that loss too.”