'Technophobe' Camilla clicks with Zoom and finds favour under Covid

From her Reading Room book club to her Strictly Come Dancing cameo, the profile of the Duchess of Cornwall has never been higher.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Camilla, 73, has guest-edited BBC 5 live’s Emma Barnett Show, filmed a SafeLives video on domestic violence, shared chocolate cake recipes on the Big Virtual Lunch, and coerced her rescue jack russell, Beth, into unveiling a Battersea Dogs & Cats Home plaque by pulling a sausage tied to the cord.

We’ve seen her dressed down in jeans, and up close and personal with her dog on her lap at home. We’ve heard her reciting WH Auden on National Poetry Day, and the role of Ship’s Captain in a celebrity-studded audio of Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach.

“Both Charles and Camilla have been troupers throughout 2020, given the pandemic, and their ages. But in terms of Camilla, she has been more visible and more audible than she has ever been before. This is Camilla on a more personal level,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine.

Which will be music to the ears of Clarence House aides charged with smoothing the duchess’s path to the consort’s throne, a journey not without its obstacles. Though the duchess’s standing has been transformed to that of one of the Queen’s favourites, the Netflix hit The Crown recently swung the spotlight back on to Charles’s marriage to Diana, serving as a reminder of Camilla’s unpopularity in that period as vilified mistress.

Not that her current high profile is part of a palace ploy to promote “Queen Camilla”, or “Princess Consort”, or whichever title is eventually bestowed. Far from it, sources insist, though her recent successes are likely to make that task easier.

Camilla is not the product of a series of palace advisers. She chooses the things she wants to do, and then aides help to deliver them, said those close to her team. She has never wanted a big PR campaign to promote her, sources said. What she wanted was to meet people, let them see what she is like, and then make their own minds up.

Zoom and other video conferencing platforms have given her that opportunity to get up close and personal to people, sources said. And she has embraced it – despite previously being a self-confessed technophobe.

She is someone who, while very aware of the need for duty and service, doesn’t take the view you can only do that with a straight face, said one who knows her. A laugh, a joke, and a little bit of self-deprecation – one of her most popular approaches – go a long way.

Related: 'Reach in' to help victims of domestic violence, urges Duchess of Cornwall

“The benefit of all this is people have got to know her, and appreciate her qualities, far more than ever before, though she has been a member of the royal family now coming up for 16 years. She has that little twinkle in her eye, and is completely relatable,” said Little.

She also, it is said, regularly reminds those around her that she had 50 years living a normal life before entering the royal world, and that she knows the difference – but she also knows where the join is.

The royal author and Camilla biographer Penny Junor said: “The royal family have really come into their own during this pandemic. They are doing the sort of stuff they have been doing on a daily basis, but because they are doing it online, far more people can access it.”

In the real world, Camilla might do a couple of visits in a day, meeting a handful of people. Now we can all “hear her voice and see her charm”, said Junor.

“She’s her own PR. As soon as she was married to Charles, and people met her, they realised she was a warm, friendly, charming, funny, woman. And it then turned out she was rather good at the job, too. So there was no need for a great PR machine to ratchet up. She is her own ambassador.”

The Camilla of the online engagements might have come as a surprise to some of the wider public, said Junor. “To the public that know her, and that have had the opportunity to meet her, they won’t be surprised. But I think to a lot of people who don’t know her, who have never met her, who have nothing to do with the charities where she has been so effective … I think it will be a revelation to them.”