Queen Camilla’s grandson does not have a ‘sense of the occasion’ of the coronation as he prepares to take the role of Page of Honour, his father has revealed.
Tom Parker Bowles, a food critic and the son of Camilla, revealed on the News Agents poscast that 13-year-old Freddy will likely enjoy the day, particularly because he will perform the role with some of his closest friends.
However, when it comes to the historic role he will play in the ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 6 May, Tom said his son’s biggest worries these days ‘are about the Spurs manager’.
The father-of-one, 48, revealed that, despite being related to the Queen, he has always shielded his son from the limelight, which also goes for Queen Camilla’s four other grandchildren.
Elsewhere in the interview, the food critic opposed any suggestion that his mother married King Charles for any reason other than love, in what may have been a response to Prince Harry’s bombshell allegations in Spare that Camilla had ‘played the long game’.
Tom Parker Bowles, the son of Queen Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles, revealed his own son Freddy is ‘more concerned with the Spurs manager’ than he is with his role as Page of Honour during the coronation ceremony next month
Speaking to Jon Sopel and Emily Maitlis this week, the food critic said of his son: ‘I don’t think he has a sense of the occasion.
‘He’s a 13-year-old boy who loves football, a Spurs supporter… So, his worries are about the Spurs manager and losing when we’re up and that sort of stuff.
‘There’s no reason for our children to be in the Press at all and so we’ve purposely kept them well away from anything to do with that…
‘I think there are a lot of rehearsals are going to happen before and he’s doing it with his cousins, his two best mates, and my first cousin’s son so they will know each other.’
Queen Camilla has previously revealed her close relationship with her grandchildren, including the emphasis she places on family times such as gathering around the dinner table.
Elsewhere in the interview, food critic and writer Tom Parker bowles praised his mother and stepfather, who will be crowned at Westminster Abbey on 6 May, for doing ‘amazingly’
Ahead of her 75th birthday last year, she told Mail+ that she had concerns about how social media and technology run the risk of eroding family values.
She said: ‘Families don’t sit down any longer, do they, and have dinner.
‘Because I am ancient, in the old days we all sat down [to eat]. Now everyone is on their devices. It just makes me quite cross!’
The grandmother-of-five added that, when she has dinner with her grandchildren, she makes them put their ‘flipping’ phones away.
However, in the same interview Camilla admitted she joined apps like Houseparty and TikTok during lockdown so she could better stay in touch with her grandchildren.
Speaking this week, Tom Parker Bowles revealed that it wasn’t ‘weird’ to think of his mother as the Queen, saying: ‘She’s still my mother… I think change happens, but I don’t care what anyone says.
‘This wasn’t any sort of end game, she married the person she loved, and this is what happened.’
Earlier this year, Prince Harry claimed in his bombshell memoir Spare that his stepmother ‘played the long game’ in order to get her hands on the crown.
He wrote of Camilla: ‘I have complex feelings about gaining a step-parent who I thought had recently sacrificed me on her personal PR altar.’
Harry also said that he and his brother William had ‘begged’ their father not to marry Camilla because they feared she would become their ‘wicked stepmother’.
In another blow, Harry described Camilla as ‘dangerous’ and a ‘villain’ who left ‘bodies in the street’ in her desire to change the public’s perception of her.
The writer, whose father is Camilla’s first husband, Andrew Parker Bowles, added that it wouldn’t change their lives at all and that it would be ‘appalling’ if he was to become a Duke.
He said: ‘You’re not going to find us with great estates and being called the Duke of Whatever. No, that would be appalling.
‘I become nothing. There would be a revolution if they start handing them out to people like me. No. Why would I expect one?’
He added of his mother and step-father: ‘I think they’re doing amazingly. I think King Charles is a good, kind, intelligent man who cares deeply about his roles wherever they may be, Prince of Wales, the King.
‘He’s been way ahead of his time on issues like sustainability, food security, farming, pollution, all these things. But people were calling him sort of mad and eccentric 20 years ago.
‘Everything that he’s talked about are now things that have hit the mainstream and now we’re really worrying about. He uses his position, as far as I’m concerned, to do good.’
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