William & Harry: The Royal Controversy of Charles & Camilla's Leaked Conversation

Prince William and Prince Harry faced one of their most awkward childhood moments when a private conversation between their father, then-Prince Charles, and Camilla was leaked to the press in the early 1990s. According to reports, the six-minute recording became a media sensation and it left the royal brothers, who are no longer on speaking terms, unable to escape the embarrassment. William and Harry faced early public scrutiny with Royal authors saying it was impossible to shield them from the fallout. "In January 1993, a six-minute, 1,574-word transcript of the then-Prince of Wales speaking to Camilla four years prior was leaked to the press in a sordid controversy dubbed 'Camillagate,'" a report by Daily Mail said. Speaking on it, royal author Robert Lacey said, "There could be no shielding William and Harry from the ear-nose-and-toe-cringing embarrassment of 'Camillagate.'" The conversation between Charles and Camilla was captured by an "amateur radio enthusiast," who later "sold the recording to a little-known Australian New Age magazine,” the publication claimed. Of the impact it had on William and Harry, royal expert Tina Brown penned in her book The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor—The Truth and the Turmoil, "It's excruciating to imagine what kind of Tampax-related ridicule of his father William endured."