The much-anticipated fifth season of the hit Netflix show, The Crown, is set to air next week, and fans are eagerly anticipating the show’s portrayal of the infamous ‘Tampongate’ scandal involving King Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.
This scandal rocked the Royal Family in the 1990s, and it caused a great deal of uproar at the time.
The Crown will revisit the affair between Prince Charles and Camilla, which took place in the late 1980s and was dubbed one of the biggest scandals to engulf the Royal Family.
The show will broadcast scenes of the intimate phone conversation between the lovers sympathetically, as two young people in love.
The leaked phone conversation took place just three months after Prince Charles and his wife, Princess Diana, publicly separated.
The full six-minute audio recording of the call was leaked to the press, alongside a transcript of the conversation.
During the conversation, Prince Charles referred to being reincarnated as a tampon in order to live inside his lover.
This crude comment caused outrage within the Royal Family, and it led to the scandal being dubbed ‘Tampongate’.
The transcript of the conversation included the following dialogue:
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.
The Crown’s fifth season will feature actor Dominic West as Prince Charles, Olivia Williams as Camilla, Imelda Staunton as Queen Elizabeth II, and Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana.
The show has been blasted for its decision to portray ‘Tampongate’, with some describing it as crass and in bad taste.
Josh O’Connor, who played a young Prince Charles in The Crown’s third and fourth series, said in an interview with SiriusXM in 2020 that he would not film the infamous phone call.
He stated that it was his one chance for his parents to see something he had acted in with no shame, and there was no way he was going to scuttle that by talking about tampons on Netflix.
Despite the controversy surrounding The Crown’s portrayal of ‘Tampongate’, fans are eagerly anticipating the show’s return to our screens.
The latest series is set to air on Netflix on November 9th, and it promises to be just as thrilling and captivating as previous seasons.
