From enjoying a moment of passion with a long-distance lover to getting our socks off during the pandemic, sexting (aka phone sex) is something that many of us will have engaged in at some point – including the royals. Yep, believe it or not, the royals have dabbled in dirty talk. *Shudders at the thought*.
Just like the rest of us, behind closed doors, the royals do let their inhibitions run wild. Unluckily for them though, not everything they do behind closed doors actually stays there. Take the now-King Charles III and Camilla Parker Bowles for example, who were caught having a rather naughty phone call back in 1989 – which was leaked to the press.
The contents of said phone call (more on that later!) unsurprisingly made headlines and, three decades on, the same is happening again thanks to The Crown. In season five, we get an insight into the reality of the royal marriages, which includes a rumoured affair between Prince Philip and a family friend as well as the breakdown of Charles and Diana's relationship, fuelled in part by his ongoing romance with Camilla.
With that in mind – and with so many questions about that sexy (read: embarrassingly cringe) phone call – here's everything we know about Tampongate...
What was Tampongate?
Three months after Charles and Princess Diana had formally separated in 1993, a full transcript of a telephone call between Charles and Camilla (that took place in 1989) was printed in the press. There was full audio to accompany it too, thanks to a rogue radio enthusiast who had stumbled upon the chat using a hi-tech scanning device.
During the six-minute call, the long-time lovers – who were both married to other people at the time – discussed being intimate with each other, but the most notable comments came from Charles, who talked of being reincarnated as Camilla's tampon.
What did Charles say to Camilla about her tampon?
The full transcript of Charles and Camilla's six-minute sex-o-thon can be found online, but we've picked out the err, best bits, below.
Charles: Oh stop! I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out . . .
Camilla: Oh!
Charles: Particularly in and out.
Camilla: Oh, that's just what I need at the moment.
Charles: Is it?
...
Charles: What about me? The trouble is I need you several times a week.
Camilla: Mmmm, so do I. I need you all the week. All the time.
Charles: Oh, God. I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!
Camilla: (Laughing) What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? (Both laugh). Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.
Charles: Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck! (Laughs)
Camilla: You are a complete idiot! (Laughs) Oh, what a wonderful idea.
Charles: My luck to be chucked down the lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down.
Camilla: (Laughing) Oh, Darling!
Charles: Until the next one comes through.
Camilla: Oh, perhaps you could come back as a box.
Charles: What sort of box?
Camilla: A box of Tampax, so you could just keep going.
Charles: That's true.
Camilla: Repeating yourself...(Laughing) Oh, darling I just want you now.
Charles: Do you?
Camilla: Mmmmm
Charles: So do I!
Camilla: Desperately, desperately.
How does The Crown handle Tampongate?
The Crown's producers have never shied away from covering the Royal Family's grittiest scandals, so it should come as no surprise that Tampongate made its way into season five. But, not all of the show's actors were in agreement about Tampongate playing out on the big screen.
"When they offered me the role, one of my first questions was — I say questions, I think it was pretty much a statement — 'We are not doing the tampon phone call'," Josh O'Connor, who played Charles for seasons three and four, previously told SirusXM’s EW Live.
"I remember thinking it was something so sordid and deeply, deeply embarrassing [at the time]," Dominic West – who has taken on the role of Charles – told Entertainment Weekly of the scandal.
"Looking back on it, and having to play it, what you're conscious of is that the blame was not with these two people, two lovers, who were having a private conversation," he went on. "What's really [clear now] is how invasive and disgusting was the press's attention to it, that they printed it out verbatim and you could call a number and listen to the actual tape."
West added that he and his on-screen lover, Olivia Williams, approached the storyline with "sympathy" for their characters. "We both felt that we wanted to do right by our characters," he said. "We felt the odds were slightly stacked against their relationship and we wanted to try and bring it across in as sympathetic a light as we could."
In response, a spokesperson for Netflix told The Telegraph that The Crown has always been presented as a drama based on historical events. The spokesperson added that series five will cover events that have already been widely documented by journalists, biographers and historians.
The Crown season five is available to stream on Netflix now.
