The Prince of Wales simply confirmed what everyone had already known for two years or more. That’s when an Australian magazine printed an alleged 1989 phone conversation between Charles and his old flame, Camilla Parker Bowles, in which the prince, during a rare transcendent moment, professed a longing to be reincarnated as her tampon. So, was she the one? Last week’s interview didn’t let on. “Mrs. Parker Bowles is a great friend of mine-I have a large number of friends I’m very lucky to have and she has been a friend for a very long time, along with a lot of other friends, and will continue to be a friend for a very long time,” said Charles.
Yet the documentary may have created more frenzy than friends for the prince. True, he displayed some self-deprecating humor: offered camel’s milk in Abu Dhabi, Charles hesitates after learning the drink is an aphrodisiac and quips, “Fat lot of use it’s going to be to me!” Viewers watched him expound on avant-garde art, the armed forces, fatherhood, even the king’s role as head of the Church of England. “I’ve always felt the Catholic subjects of the sovereign are equally important as the Anglican,” said the prince. “Likewise, I think the Islamic subjects or the Hindu subjects or the Zoroastrian subjects… are of equal and vital importance.” But Britons also saw his exasperating smugness: “I happen to be one of those people-I can’t help it-who feels very strongly and deeply about things.”
So do his subjects. In a phone-in poll published the day of the show in Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, two thirds of the callers said that Charles wasn’t fit to be king; 78 percent favored abolishing the monarchy in the 21st century. How could he pretend to be the Defender of the Faith (or all faiths) if he couldn’t practice fidelity in marriage? In the perennial media showdown between the unhappy couple (who formally separated in 1992), Diana seemed once again to have come out on top. The morning after the interview, the tabloids bannered Charles’s confession but also ran front-page photos of Di arriving for a gala dinner in a stunning low-cut black chiffon dress-as if to say, Look what you gave up. A headline in the Daily Mail blared, CHARLES BLUSTERS AS DIANA DAZZLES.
All in all, it was a bad heir day. Hours before the documentary ran, Charles overshot a runway while trying to land his royal jet in Scotland, blowing out a tire but escaping injury. Like the plane mishap, the admission of adultery probably won’t hurt the prince in the long run. Divorce, if it comes, is “very much in the future” and, Charles insists, won’t stand in the way of his becoming king. Indeed, a renewed surge of popularity in the latest polls showed that his candor paid off. But will the public put up with his sanctimony? “I’m all in favor of adapting to changing circumstances, within reason, because I do think there are timeless principles which matter,” the prince told interviewer Dimbleby. “I still think there’s such a thing as good taste and bad taste, and I believe in good taste.”
PHOTO: A bad heir day? As the Prince of Wales revealed his inner self, his estranged wife showed off her chiffon-clad outer form. He wouldn’t say whether “great friend’ Camilla Parker Bowles was, in fact, the Other Woman.
