After the publication of his new royal cookbook, Tom Parker Bowles has revealed quite a few tidbits about growing up with Queen Camilla as his mother, and in a new interview with the Telegraph, he made a rare comment about his stepbrothers, Prince William and Prince Harry.
Parker Bowles, who released Cooking & The Crown in September, told the publication that news of his mother’s affair with The King (then Prince Charles) turned his life upside down.
“It was the very height of the tabloid era. I remember being chased at 100mph by paps trying to get a shot,” the food writer shared. “My mother being screamed at to try to get a reaction. Pushing, jostling. It was horrific, and you are protective of your mother.”
He added that “counting how many paps were at the gates, to see who was watching us and taking photographs” had become “all as normal as bacon and eggs in the morning.”
“You didn’t think of it in any other way,” Parker Bowles continued, although he found the press intrusion to be “barbaric.” The food critic said that he could relate to his stepbrothers Harry and William because of what he went through with the press.
“I learned a long time ago not to put my fat fingers into the world of William and Harry,” he told the Telegraph. “But it was appalling what they went through. I’ve had a billionth of what they’ve had to go through but hell, I sympathize.”
Although he didn’t expand on his relationship, or lack thereof, with his stepbrothers—the three are said to not to be close—Parker Bowles, 49, did say that he is likely attending Christmas with the royals for the very first time this year.
“My mum said ‘I’d love you to come, I haven’t had Christmas with you for a long time,’” he told the Telegraph. “It has been a hell of a two years for them. The older you get, the more conscious you become of mortality, especially with illnesses and the rest of it.”
The formerMasterChef critic recently admitted that he’d never been to a royal Christmas celebration “for various reasons” in an interview with People. However, this year, it seems like he’ll be heading to Sandringham, although the Telegraph reported it’s “not 100 percent confirmed.”
So what’s on the royal Christmas schedule? “I genuinely know nothing about it,” Parker Bowles said. “I know there’s turkey and sprouts and church. And I have to bring a suit and a dinner jacket.”
