Does the Queen’s son have more of a common touch than the rest of the royals?

Tom Parker Bowles doesn’t live in a fish bowl like other royals. I almost fell in love with him, writes Charlotte Cripps

He stated with a matter-of-fact ordinariness, ‘She’s still our mother’ (Getty)

Camilla’s son, Tom Parker Bowles, 48, clearly has no royal airs and graces – despite the fact that his mother will be crowned Queen in a few weeks alongside his stepdad and godfather, King Charles. How refreshing.

In a rare interview this week about his close royal ties, he came across as so genuinely normal, he sounded almost nervous as he said: “You’re not going to find us [himself and his sister Laura Lopes] with great estates and being called the Duke of Whatever. No, that would be appalling.”

He added: “I become nothing. There would be a revolution if they start handing [titles] out to people like me. No. Why would I expect one?”

The well-known food critic and writer also told Global’s The News Agents podcast that it’s not weird to think of his mother as Queen, stating with a matter-of-fact ordinariness, “She’s still our mother,” while also bravely defending her.

“I don’t care what anyone says, this wasn’t any sort of endgame” to get the crown, he said – after Prince Harry, writing in his memoir Spare, called the new Queen “dangerous” and a “villain” who had leaked stories to the press for her own gain. Her son insisted Camilla had married for love.

I was just as impressed when he stood up for the right of anti-monarchist campaigners to protest at the coronation, saying it’s a “free country” – something I can’t begin to imagine other minor royals would dream of even thinking.

When he explained that Freddy, his football-mad 13-year-old son, has no idea of the importance of his role in the coronation as a page of honour – “His worries are about the Spurs manager, and losing when we’re up, and that sort of stuff” – I almost fell in love with him.

It’s good to see the Queen’s son has more of the common touch than the rest of the royals. Parker Bowles is unobtrusive, and utterly untouched by pomp and ceremony. He apparently travels on the Tube – wow – and lives a “normal” life for somebody who counts Prince William and Harry as stepbrothers. He’s doing exactly what other minor royals should be doing: working hard and ignoring all the divisiveness of the other younger royals. Yet he is the Queen’s son. How has he managed this – and can the rest of the royals learn from him?

Prince Andrew famously told people he was too grand to travel by bucket airline, Tube or taxi; Edward and Sophie seem to be defined more by their titles than their deeds as they move into Duke and Duchess territory; while Harry and Meghan are obsessed about their kids becoming a prince and a princess – and securing bodyguards.

While these royals live in a fish bowl, Parker Bowles, on the other hand, is just as much at home in a supermarket as his children prepare to play central roles in the coronation. He’s always quietly accepted that his mother had a particularly high-profile relationship – something King Charles admired and said his stepson had always handled well.

It wasn’t easy as the Charles/Camilla affair scandal broke; Parker Bowles has spoken about wanting to punch the paparazzi in the face when he was an adolescent and they swarmed him and his family at their Wiltshire home.

Who can blame him? He and his sister, Laura, didn’t receive any tutoring on how to cope in the media spotlight, because, as he once said, they are “straight-out commoners”. But he had to learn the hard way that when, in his wilder youth, he “got into trouble for being caught with grass, or ecstasy, or whatever it was I was always caught with” – unlike his mates, he would end up on the front page of a tabloid newspaper.

I have to admit, I didn’t know that much about Camilla’s son until the run-up to the coronation – but I’m starting to think that the other royals should learn a thing or two from him. He might not have royal blood, but unlike many other members of the royal dynasty, he’s quietly getting on with his life – building his career and being a father to his children. He also has a daughter, Lola, 15, with his ex-wife, the fashion editor Sara Buys.

There is nothing that annoys me more than an entitled or lazy royal who hasn’t got a clue about the real world. The Windsors is returning to Channel 4 for a coronation special, but it’s embarrassing when the real royal family soap opera is more absurd than the one on TV.

The good news? It seems that Parker Bowles is of a different species. Like his mother Camilla, who has spent the majority of her life doing the stuff we all do, like the shopping or ringing the plumber, he’s been lucky. He hasn’t bypassed normality, as sadly is the case for many other royals.