The royals - Kitty Kelley [225]
If Charles had chosen one act, short of child molestation, he could not have alienated his future subjects more. Through The Prince’s Trust he had established one of the country’s biggest charities to benefit disadvantaged children, but no amount of grants to inner-city youngsters could make him look princely now. As his biographer Anthony Holden put it, “No one listens to do-gooding sermons from a man who is two-timing the world’s most desirable woman.”
Shaken by the crisis, Charles summoned six friends to Sandringham to advise him. Afterward one man was dispatched to tell the Telegraph that the Prince was prepared to make any sacrifice to insure his succession to the throne. The headline on the next day’s front page: “Prince of Wales Chooses the Celibate Life.”
The attempt to win back public confidence did not work. Nothing could stop the sniggering jokes. “That’ll be one pack of Charlie’s,” sang a London grocery clerk, ringing up a box of sanitary napkins. A cartoonist drew Charles’s face as an egg cup with yolk dribbling down his nose. Greeting cards appeared with his caricature: “For your birthday, I’d like to treat you to a Chuck and Di margarita. It’s cold, frosty, and it’s on the rocks.” The Palace finally intervened to prevent a safe-sex poster from appearing on British billboards. The proposed advertisement had shown a wedding picture of the Prince and Princess of Wales kissing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in front of huge crowds. The caption read “Appearances Can Be Deceptive. Use a Johnny Condom.” A spokesman for the British Safety Council resented the Palace interference: “We really could not care less what the royals think,” said Fiona Harcombe. “The benefits far outweigh the offense it might cause to the Queen.”
Charles was humiliated. “His Royal Highness didn’t want to leave the grounds,” recalled one of his security guards, “but his friends encouraged him not to retreat. ‘Be seen helping people,’ they advised. But he was scared. We saw it in his eyes. Like a rabbit in the clamp of a trap.”
When Charles visited the scene of an oil tanker spill off Scotland’s Shetland Islands, he imposed a “no children” rule. His aide explained: “They tend to ask awkward questions.” The Prince arrived looking drawn and worried. His thinning hair was combed to conceal his bald spot, and he appeared stooped and defeated. He avoided the press as he tramped through oil-soaked fields, and he strained to make small talk with farmers whose fields and crops were buried in gunk. Later, at a midmorning reception, he passed on orange juice and ordered a Scotch whiskey. “We asked HRH [Philip] to visit the oil spill as president of the World Wildlife Fund,” said the WWF’s former communications director, “but Charles’s staff didn’t want him [Philip] there…. They needed the sympathetic coverage for the Prince of Wales. But the WWF is the most prestigious conservation organization in the world, and we, too, needed a presence…. We finally worked it out so both of them would go and pursue separate agendas. Charles said beforehand he would not respond to the press, but Philip agreed to answer questions. After the first one, though, he lost his temper.”
A television reporter had asked Philip whether his visit had been overshadowed by headlines about his son’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
“It’s nothing to do with that,” snapped Philip. Growing angry, he wheeled on the reporter. “I might have guessed someone like you would ask that question. Who do you represent?”
The reporter replied: “ITN [Independent Television News].”
“Figures,” said Philip, storming off.
The Duke of Edinburgh complained to the WWF communications director that the question was rude and boorish. “The ITN reporter wasn’t disrespectful, just straightforward,” said the WWF employee. “But the lack of deference shown in posing the question in the first place was