Reason why King Charles and Queen Camilla's phone call transcript was locked away in a safe for three years
It was dubbed 'tampongate' or 'Camillagate' in newspaper headlines...After Princess Diana and Prince Charles separated, the future King’s affair with Queen Camilla (formerly Parker Bowles) became public knowledge after the transcript of their steamy phone call was leaked to the press.
The transcript, which some said included ‘phone sex’ between Charles and Camilla during the call, was plastered on the front pages of newspapers.
It was dubbed both ‘Camillagate’ and ‘tampongate’ after it was teased at the end of 1992, before it was released the following January.
We take a look back at the scandal, and how it came after a year of hardships for the royal family.
Was the phone call between Camilla and Charles real?
The phone call reportedly took place in 1989, when Charles was married to the late Princess Diana and Camilla to her first husband Andrew Parker Bowles. It happened on December 17, 1989, where aside from the raunchy conversation, the pair also discussed the logistics of sneaking around.
The transcript famously included a line in which the heir to the throne expressed his wish to be reincarnated as Camilla‘s underwear, and joked he’d probably come back as a ‘tampon’ instead.
In the steamy conversation, they expressed yearning for each other.
“Mmm. You’re awfully good at feeling your way along,” Camilla tells Charles during the phone call.
“Oh stop! I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out… particularly in and out,” he replies.
“Oh, that’s just what I need at the moment,” Camilla adds. “I know it would revive me. I can’t bear a Sunday night without you.”
The Prince of Wales then says he ‘fills up’ her tank, and declares he ‘needs [her] several times a week’.
The press printed it out verbatim and even set up a phone number people could call to listen to the actual recording.
Charles later admitted in a 1994 documentary that he had cheated on Diana, but said it was after their relationship had “irretrievably broken down, us both having tried”.
Read more: How Queen Camilla and King Charles are related and why royals married their cousins
What did Charles say about Camilla’s tampon?
During the six-minute phone call Charles tells Camilla he wants to ‘live inside’ her clothes.
The then prince says: “Oh, God. I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!”
Camilla laughs: “What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.”
The future king jokes: “Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck! My luck to be chucked down a lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down.”
They end their call by declaring their love for one another on the phone, with Charles telling Camilla: “Your greatest achievement is to love me.”
The future queen responds: “I’d suffer anything for you. That’s love. It’s the strength of love.”
Radio enthusiast ‘leaked the call’
There are several theories in how the phone call between Charles and Camilla was leaked. Some ex-spies claimed in the 1990s that it could have been British secret services who recorded royal calls, others pointed to professionals leaking the transcript.
Richard Stott, former Daily Mirror editor claimed in his memoir Dogs and Lampposts that the tape was recorded and brought to the newspaper by a resident from Merseyside.
He said they “had had a few pints of lager and a curry and decided he would test out his latest gadget, an electronic homing device that picks up Cellnet signals.”
The future King Charles was reportedly staying nearby at the time and the amateur radio enthusiast stumbled upon the signal and recognised who was talking.
Whereas, Tina Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles, explains intercepting other people’s calls in that time wasn’t as difficult as it would be now.
Read more: Tragic reason why King Charles couldn’t marry Queen Camilla in the first place
Why did it come out?
Tina Brown further claimed in her book that the man who recorded Charles and Camilla’s phone call only took it to the press when a call between Diana and an intimate friend was leaked. Diana’s scandal beforehand was dubbed ‘Squidgygate’ as the man on the other end of the call kept calling her squidgy as a term of endearment.
The Sun published the recording between Diana and James Gilbey, where he also called her ‘darling’. In the conversation, the late Princess of Wales tells James that her husband makes life ‘real torture’.
However, Diana’s own call took place the same year in 1989. It’s believed Diana’s was just two weeks later on New Year’s Eve, due to clues in the discussion. Bank manager Cyril Reenan, 70 years old and retired, made the recording and sold it to the press. But they didn’t leak it for three years, after the National Enquirer got hold of a copy and published their own story.
She writes the unnamed man brought Charles and Camilla’s tape to the Daily Mirror in October 1992, and he was paid £30,000. It was teased in the press at the end of the year but not fully published until the following January after both Charles and Camilla were separated from their spouses.
Defending the press
Colin Myler, editor of the Sunday Mirror, defended the paper publishing Charles and Camilla’s phone call transcript in an editor’s note.
He wrote: “I believe it is wrong that the near nine million readers of this newspaper should be denied the right to read something so important affecting the future King of England, when people in Australia, Germany, America, and Ireland already have.”
At the time he had to make a decision and whether exposing the affair would threaten Charles’ succession. Although, decades later, it shows it did not.
There were also concerns it could impact a fragile Princess Diana and how she would react, or the possibility of legal action.
It was only published after Diana and Charles’ 1992 tour appeared to show cracks in their marriage.
Read more: King Charles ‘regrets behaving badly’ before Princess Diana divorce
What happened to Charles and Camilla after the phone call transcript was leaked?
Charles and Diana announced their separation, but their divorce wasn’t finalised for a further four years.
The affair being made public also put pressure on Camilla’s marriage to Andrew, and they later filed for divorce.
But leaked transcript of the phone call sent shockwaves through Buckingham Palace, although reports Charles and Camilla were having an affair were already rumoured in the press. It was the same year Andrew Morton released his biography on the late Princess of Wales, Diana: In her own words. However, at the time, the royal denied having connection to the memoir. But after her death, Morton revealed she had sent him recorded tapes for the book.
Charles and Camilla continued to seeing each other, but didn’t go public with their relationship until after Diana’s death in 1997.
They then married in a civil ceremony in 2005.
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