Queen Camilla's Son Shut Down This Popular Rumor About Her

Queen Camilla ‘s eldest son, Tom Parker-Bowles, has read a lot about his mother over the years. In an interview with The Times , he says he always knew the public would eventually come around to his mother after her rocky relationship with the tabloids in the years after her affair with King Charles became public. But there is one rumor that persists.

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“Oh, you know she has that reputation of drinking gin and smoking?” Parker-Bowles asked The Times journalist Mark Harrison in an in-depth Sept. 28 profile timed to the release of his cookbook Cooking and the Crown .

“Never drunk a glass of gin in her life. Doesn’t smoke.”

Parker-Bowles blames British comedy series The Windsors for this popular characterization of his mother. It’s no secret that Camilla, often blamed for the downfall of Charles’ marriage to the beloved Princess Diana , wasn’t always a favorite of the British public so was rarely portrayed positively in The Windsors or the wider media. However, her son wasn’t surprised to see the recent shift in mindset.

“If anyone ever meets my mother, they always… I mean, a son would say this, but she’s someone I love going to have dinner with,” he told The Times .

Yet, needless to say, the early days of his mother’s affair scandal weren’t easy on a then-teenage Parker-Bowles who says the media frenzy made him “angry, very angry.”

“Especially when the paparazzi were at their worst, saying things, trying to get a reaction. Running and screaming and you’d just want to smack them. But you didn’t,” the oldest of Camilla’s two children with ex-husband Andrew Parker-Bowles explained.

“We’d count them, you know? How many paps were lurking in the garden, on the public footpath… ‘Oh, there are four today.’ I think we all [brushed it off] — especially my mother… She’s tough.”

Earlier in the interview, Parker-Bowles also shared his praise for the King. “He’s a great man. You’d expect me to say that,” he said. “But I’m not doing it in any other way apart from [the perspective of] what I do, and I can comment on this.”

Before you go, click here to see the best photos of Queen Elizabeth II before she was queen.