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By Andrea Peyser
April 25, 2016
A Queen Camilla might not be that horrid after all
To the British royal family, physical beauty and eating disorders are so 1997. Crow’s feet, turkey necks and middle-age spread are the new black.
It’s time to make peace with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, the blowsy, bossy lady born Camilla Shand, later known world over as the much-despised Camilla Parker Bowles. Or “the Rottweiller,’’ as Charles’ late, luminous and famously bulimic ex-wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, called her rival for Charles’ heart and other organs.
Camilla, 68, is the only woman ever to get a pulse from the lethargic Charles, Prince of Wales, 67. She engaged in a disgusting good-night phone chat with the next in line to the throne, secretly recorded in 1989. In it, Charles, then married to Diana, revealed an unwholesome obsession with living inside the married premenopausal Camilla’s undies. The conversation reads like bad porn. It really happened.
Camilla: “I need you all the week. All the time.’’
Charles: “Oh, God, I’ll just live inside your trousers or something . . .’
Camilla: “What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers?”
Charles: “Or, God forbid a Tampax . . . My luck to be chucked down the lavatory and go on and on, forever swirling round on the top, never going down.’’ Ick.
At least we know who wears the trousers in this relationship.
With Diana dead in a Paris car crash and Camilla divorced, Charles finally secured the permission of his mumsy, Queen Elizabeth II, to marry his mature lady love, announcing in 2005, “Mrs. Parker Bowles and I are absolutely delighted.”
Mrs. Who? Mazel tov, anyway.
But as the jolly Windsors settle into their golden years, there comes a new book by Christopher Andersen, “Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate and the Throne.’’ In it, Andersen describes Charles’ decades-long infatuation with Barbra Streisand, with whom he had an awkward meeting in 1974. “Who knows? If I’d been nicer to him, I might have been the first real Jewish princess,” Streisand later cracked.
The book paints Camilla — who forswore the title Princess of Wales because of its close association with Diana — as a media-whoring manipulator, who schemed to win the role of queen.
But wait. Camilla agreed to the current queen’s demand that she never take her place. If Charles, 67, ever wrests the crown from his 90-year-old mama’s head and becomes the king of England, Camilla, who would legally become queen, has agreed to take the title princess consort. Ultimately, it’s up to Charles to decide if she’s named queen. Can His Chucklehead really refuse his muse?
I guess all bets are off in the runup to the throne. Go, Camilla!
Andersen claims in the book that Camilla, who has blue blood coursing through her veins, tried to talk Charles into persuading his son Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, to break up with his commoner then-girlfriend, Kate Middleton, who is descended — horrors! — from coal miners. He describes Camilla as waging the greatest rivalry with her younger, prettier foe since “Batman v Superman.’’
“Camilla is a bit of a snob,” Andersen told The Daily Beast. “She’s an aristocrat. She has always been moving in royal circles. She had always thought of herself as the heiress to Alice Keppel, her great-grandmother, who was the mistress of [King] Edward VII.’’
Charles advised William, he wrote, to make a commitment to Kate or break up with her. William dumped Kate briefly in 2007, delivering the blow to her via cellphone. The ploy backfired in Camilla’s face.
At the behest of her mother, Carole, Kate was photographed with other guys and gals, making William crazy with jealousy. Wills and Kate got hitched in a lavish 2011 Westminster Abbey ceremony fit for a — you know. She’s now Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, mother of a royal son and daughter, both of whom could one day be named Britain’s monarchs.
Not until after Camilla pushes her way to the throne! Hey — that’s cool with me.
Camilla could never compete with the lovely Kate, 34, who is likely to be named queen consort if her hubby is king. Kate owns the heart of Prince William, 33, and of the British people with her Diana-like grace.
Charles’ sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, accept Camilla as their stepmother. She’s always been the queen of Charles’ heart. I find it refreshing that two elderly people who so clearly belong together ended up together. Its high time to let a woman with saddle bags and laugh lines be called “Your Majesty.’’
Grab that throne, Camilla. You’ve earned it.