The Ex-factor

Following Camilla's holiday with her former husband and her children, KEITH DOVKANTS and ROBERT JOBSON reveal how the men in her life, once close friends, had a royal falling out

THE revelation in a London newspaper that Camilla, our future Queen, last week enjoyed a Caribbean holiday with her ex-husband, Andrew Parker Bowles raises a delicate question: what does Prince Charles make of it?

He and Camilla are scheduled to begin a royal tour of the West Indies today, but in the meantime she and Mr Parker Bowles, below, have spent time together on Antigua.

Some will view Camilla's holiday as a rather sophisticated expression of a highly civilised marriage. She has grown-up children, Tom and Laura, with Mr Parker Bowles and they, with their own young babies, were in the family group on Antigua. Surely the fact Prince Charles appears happy to sanction the reunion suggests a generosity of spirit?

Well, it would, apart from one thing: the prince is said to detest Mr Parker Bowles, and the feeling is said to be mutual.

Prince Charles and Andrew Parker Bowles were once the best of friends. At 68, Mr Parker Bowles is almost nine years older, but they have known each other since childhood. His father, Derek Parker Bowles, a leading figure in horseracing, was close to the late Queen Mother, and Andrew became one of her favourites.

As the Prince of Wales grew up he is said to have been a little awestruck by his older friend. Mr Parker Bowles joined the Guards and acquired a reputation some characterised at the time as "London's best – and busiest – lover". He and Camilla married in 1973, after she and Prince Charles had a brief dalliance, and she settled into the life of the wife of a career army officer.

In the late 1980s it became known, in some circles, that Charles and Camilla were having an affair but it was all very discreet and would probably have remained that way had Princess Diana been able to accept it. But she co-operated with author Andrew Morton, who "outed" Charles and Camilla in his book on Diana. Then, in 1994, Prince Charles confessed in a television interview that he had been sleeping with his friend's wife.

Mr Parker Bowles, who had apparently borne the undercurrent of gossip with cheerful stoicism until then, reacted with disbelief. How could Prince Charles do such a thing?

The Prince of Wales is not often credited with an ability to perceive things from another's viewpoint, and Mr Parker Bowles was said to be seriously wounded. This was a man who was said to have revered the prince and his family and served them with loyalty.

A few years later, his devotion to the royals was rewarded when he was made Silver Stick in Waiting to the Queen, a ceremonial position rooted in service of the sovereign.

When he retired from the army as a brigadier in 1994, he might have expected a high-ranking position in the royal household, but by then he and Prince Charles were no longer friends. According to a palace source, the prince at first failed to understand Mr Parker Bowles's anger over his TV confession, then came to resent it.

Yet when Mr Parker Bowles and Camilla divorced in 1995 and she became openly Charles's mistress, the close friendship Camilla had enjoyed with her husband endured. "They speak on the phone most days," the source said. "The prince hates it, but there's nothing he can do. Andrew is her best friend."

Now they have been on holiday together. No-one is suggesting their behaviour was improper – Mr Parker Bowles is known to be devoted to his second wife, Rosemary – and the prince goes along with the couple being invited to Sandringham. In private, however, he is said to grumble about their closeness.

Mr Parker Bowles does not seem to mind too much. Since leaving the army he has made a successful career in property development and it is said that after he remarried, in 1996, he discovered the joys of marital fidelity.

Rosemary Parker Bowles was also due to join the family on Antigua. But it was always a certain bet that, however civilised the party, Prince Charles would not be joining in.