Prince Charles and his now-wife Camilla spent the better part of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s embroiled in an affair. Both were married; Charles to Princess Diana and Camilla to Andrew Parker Bowles.
The two spent a lot of time sneaking around and, unsurprisingly, spent a lot of time on the phone planning the next time they could see one another. One of those phone calls was leaked to the British press in a scandal that would eventually be known as “Camillagate” or “Tampongate.”
One of those phone calls would end up haunting the pair for possibly the rest of their lives. In audio leaked in 1993, Prince Charles is heard telling Camilla, “Oh God. I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!”
She replies, “What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers” to which he says, “Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck!”
Princess Diana’s personal protection officer, Ken Wharfe, later admitted Diana was shocked by the phone call. In his book Guarding Diana: Protecting the Princess Around the World, he wrote, “She told me that she had been genuinely shocked by some of the baser comments, particular the Prince’s tampon reference.”
Most of us know what has happened in the years that have followed: Princess Diana died in an auto accident in 1997. Prince Charles and Camilla got married in 2005. Since then, many have noticed that it seems like Prince Charles avoids events that have a connection to Princess Diana.
Some believed that his avoidance was out of a desire to not detract from the events themselves. But when Prince Charles chose to leave the country for the recent unveiling of a Princess Diana statue, a lot of people were still surprised. After all, the pair’s sons were the ones who had the statue commissioned in the first place.
A royal writer and friend of Prince Charles recently told the Express that the truth is that the leaked conversations still impact the future king to this day.
Howard Hodgson explains, “He knows that people not sympathetic to him or the monarchy will recall it at the time of his coronation and at all other meaningful moments in his life.”
Howard added, “He remains deeply ashamed of the embarrassment that he caused his mother, deeply sorry for the pain it caused both his and Camilla’s children.”
Though the phone call took place over 30 years ago, it seems that it will continue to reverberate throughout royal circles for years to come.
