Queen Camilla may have the world at her fingertips, but when it comes to staying connected, she’s got a surprisingly retro go-to: a Nokia brick phone. In a recent interview with Women & Home magazine, Camilla's eldest son, Tom Parker Bowles shared that his mum’s choice of communication can make reaching her a bit tricky, especially via modern messaging services like WhatsApp. "We do [use a WhatsApp group], my children, my sister and cousins- but my mum still uses an old-fashioned Nokia telephone, so [she] can't.
I think it's for security," the 49-year-old food writer said. "She's working a lot harder, she's always worked quite hard (so) it's still the case of, I ring my mother, she doesn't answer, I look on the television (and think) 'Ah! She's in Jersey'." Since her husband's ascension to the throne in 2022, Queen Camilla has become undeniably busier, but her preference for a simple phone may be rooted in past privacy breaches involving her calls.
In the early ‘90s, a private phone conversation between Camilla and then-Prince Charles was leaked to the tabloids, resulting in the infamous ‘Tampongate’ scandal. At the time, both were married to other people- Charles to Princess Diana, and Camilla to Tom’s father, Andrew Parker Bowles. The recorded conversation, where Charles famously joked about being reincarnated as a tampon, sparked a media frenzy and further intensified his already turbulent separation from Diana.
Even after the scandal that shook the royal famil.