Charles and Camilla: the PR job

By MICHELE HEWITSON

The question in tonight's Panorama programme is Queen Camilla? (TV One, 9.35). Bring it on, says a republican group, plotting, as the voiceover says, not with gunpowder but with a media campaign.

To force the issue, say the republicans, could create a constitutional crisis and bring down the monarchy.

Panorama goes to the people. A woman is chuffed that Prince Charles said hello to her daughter.

Would she like him to turn up with Camilla? "No. Because he's not right with Diana, is he? I'll say no more."

Melanie McDonagh, a columnist with the London Evening Standard, has quite a bit more to say.

The relationship of Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, she says, is grounded in the destruction of two marriages. The idea that they "should somehow profit from unhappiness ... outrages our sense of justice".

Back to the people. "She's a good lady, she's been good for him," says a chap on the street. Queen Camilla? "Well, perhaps not as far as that."

This sort of speculation has happened before of course. Queen Camilla? opens on an early autumn day in central London. The Prime Minister is about to deliver "an unpleasant message to Buckingham Palace".

The year is 1936, the Prime Minister is Stanley Baldwin, and the unpleasant message is that there will be no support for a marriage between the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII.

Back in 1936, people like public relations "genius" Mark Boland didn't exist. The republicans may be plotting, but the machinations on behalf of the monarch-in-waiting are no less than award-winning.

Boland has won an industry prize for "the public rehabilitation of the couple ... that may or may not lead to the couple's marriage".

The programme traces his PR campaign - called campaign CPB - through the media. Here's the footage of the couple's first public outing: not a bread roll is thrown (CPB, it is rumoured, once had buns thrown at her at a supermarket).

There's the first, platonic, public kiss; CPB speaking at an osteoporosis fundraiser; CPB in the front seat at a fashion show (this is meant to demonstrate her metamorphosis from "county girl" to "showbiz and glamour").

It hasn't quite taken. There's a completely dotty moment when CPB greets her lover with a kiss on each cheek, and then a curtsy. She's wearing a parka over a skirt and carrying what looks like a shepherd's crook.

Despite the editor of American Vogue declaring recently that CPB was as glamorous as Madonna, a Diana for the 21st century she ain't. But then she never had to be glam during Diana's lifetime to compete for Charles' affections.

"She does look marvellous in jodhpurs and a mud-splattered hat,"drawls Nicky Haslam, a friend of CPB's family. "That's the whole point of Camilla."

Which might endear her to the Queen, but not, it seems, to the nation as a future Queen herself.

There are plenty of obstacles to such a union. Panorama delves into the Scroll Room in Westminster's Victoria Tower where every Act of Parliament dating back to 1497 is kept.

And then there's Mummy. Charles can't marry without the Queen's permission. Or, Panorama, suggests, Helen Clark's. CPB would, after all, be our Queen too.

But mainly it's about winning over the little people. Despite Campaign CPB, 52 per cent of those surveyed by Panorama were against her becoming Queen, although 57 per cent had no problems with the couple living together.

Shame about the name, laments Lord Armstrong, a former cabinet secretary. He thinks CPB would "make rather a good Queen. I just slightly wish she wasn't called Camilla."