Camilla drottninggemål av storbritannien andrew parker bowles

Before becoming King Charles' consort, Queen Camilla was married to Andrew Parker Bowles for over 20 years.

She said: "Everybody loves Andrew, he’s a real charmer, but he's always terribly misbehaving. Indeed she once told Camilla (before she was Queen) to get a proper bra fitting.

'Andrew loves that,' says one Cotswolds neighbour. Her ideal man, she once said, would be someone who is 'funny, clever, has integrity, will pick up the restaurant tab and not talk about himself all the time.'

According to another close figure, Parker Bowles ticks all those boxes.

'I would say there are similarities between Anne's sharp wit and Camilla's rather waspish turn of phrase.'

All the same it is difficult to reconcile Ms Robinson, whose autobiography Memoirs Of An Unfit Mother went into unflinching detail about her alcoholism, losing custody of her daughter and battle for sobriety before finding her TV success. The reason for this, Kay was told, is because they both wanted to keep things quiet for as long as possible.

Per the biographer, John said that Camilla's parents were "very keen that Andrew should marry her".

The Queen wed her first husband on July 4, 1973 at the Guards Chapel in Wellington Barracks with Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Anne among the guests.

'Challenges' in their marriage

"Whether Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles were sort of a marriage convenience, rather hard to say, but no reason to suspect that she didn't love him when they married because they were together for 20 years," Joe told HELLO!.

One of his old friends at Ampleforth, the North Yorkshire boarding school known as the Catholic Eton, is Father Felix Stevens with whom he played cricket for the college and who later went into the priesthood.

It was Father Felix, a former master of St Benet's Hall, Oxford, and a neighbour of Ms Robinson's, who suggested she include the brigadier — also one of his contemporaries at Ampleforth — on the guest list.

Former newspaper columnist Ms Robinson has remained uncharacteristically silent about just what triggered the friendship, but I understand that the attraction on that first encounter was mutual.

According to friends, they discovered they had more shared interests than they thought.

Ms Robinson is no Cotswolds-weekender or media-townie (she has had roots in the region for 40 years) and, since her divorce from her ex-journalist second husband John Penrose 15 years ago, has lived there full-time.

Meanwhile Parker Bowles has remained at the former marital home of his dead second wife Rosemary in Wiltshire, with its close proximity to some of the country's best-known race tracks where he is a familiar figure.

Camilla has two siblings, Mark Roland, and Sonia Annabel.

When it comes to Camilla’s educational background, when aged five she was sent to a co-educational school in Ditchling village, and then five years later, she enrolled at Queen’s Gate School in London. "Andrew was in no position to complain; and when he discovered what was going on, he wisely didn't make a fuss," Penny wrote, in an excerpt published by the Daily Mail.

Camilla and Andrew eventually divorced in 1995, announcing that the decision to end their marriage was "taken jointly".

Camilla was said to have been "deeply saddened" by the death of her former husband's second wife, Rosemary Parker Bowles, in 2010, and attended a memorial service for her. 

"I think it's an extremely comfortable relationship," Joe said of Camilla and Andrew, describing it as "very civilized." He added: "It's not forced.

He was at one time described as ' London 's best — and busiest — lover'

Pictured at the Cheltenham Festival in 2020, Parker Bowles and Camilla remain close friends. However, Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, and although Prince Charles claimed that Camilla was just a very close friend, he later admitted that they were lovers, during his marriage with Lady Diana, which as he put it, was ‘irretrievably broken down’.

As mentioned, Camilla married Prince Charles in a wedding ceremony held on 9 April 2005, and became the Duchess of Cornwall.

As for Ms Robinson, after two failed marriages — and a daughter Emma by her first husband, the late Times editor Charles Wilson, who like Parker Bowles was a member of the Jockey Club — she too has no wish for any attention.

So what is it about Parker Bowles that she finds attractive?