I met Queen Camilla – this is what she’s really like | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV
Grant Harrold recalled the first time he met Camilla while serving as a royal butler as the Queen celebrated her birthday earlier this month. During an appearance on The Royals Uncensored, he suggested Brits will look back on Charles and Camilla’s romance as one of the “best of all time” in an on-air intro.
The Queen Consort celebrated her 77th birthday on July 16 by touring the Channel Islands with King Charles, where crowds gathered to cheer and offer well-wishes.
King Charles and Queen Camilla were crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 6, 2023. Describing her first meeting with the royal before she later married Prince Charles, Grant recalled: “He was in the room when I had my interview and it took me completely by surprise. I knew I was going to meet him but I didn’t know I was going to meet him.”
“I was really confused at the time.”
She added: “But she was so nice. I was so nervous during the interview. She was wonderful and kept offering me more tea. She was almost like a mother figure. But she really put me at ease.”
Grant praised Charles but admitted Camilla was “phenomenal” during her time in the House of Windsor.
He said Camilla often wrote him letters and bought him gifts on special occasions such as Christmas and birthdays.
“My mother was a fan of Princess Diana,” Grant told the audience. “But the interesting thing was that within a few years my mother even changed her mind.”
Camilla faced the most intense public discontent and hostility in the 1990s and early 2000s, following the separation of Charles and Diana’s marriage.
Princess Diana said in a BBC interview that “there were three of us in this marriage”, which reinforced the public hostility when Camilla’s relationship with Charles was confirmed.
Negative perceptions towards Camilla continued following the death of Princess Diana, but over the years, as Camilla integrated into the Royal Family, the public began to warm up to the Queen Consort.
Charles and Camilla finally married in April 2005; decades after their romance began in the 1970s.
