I’ve referred to Tom Parker Bowles as a “failson” before, but I sort of wince at applying the term to Tom. While I’m no Parker Bowles defender, I do think Tom has carved out a little niche for himself as a food writer and bon vivant. He’s “successful” by certain metrics, although obviously, his connections and nepotism have paved his way. Currently, Tom is promoting his book, Cooking & The Crown, which is part history and part cookbook. He was given access to a lot of royal kitchens and palace archives when it came to royal recipes and palace-made food. To promote the book, Tom spoke to British Vogue. Some highlights:

Whether he received QEII’s permission to write this book: [He] can’t entirely recall how the process worked, but, yes, he definitely did ask, he says with a near-imperceptible eye roll. “Thanks for checking… It was about when the late Queen’s jubilee was,” he recalls, of “running it up the flagpole” with the royal household in early 2022, and getting the official go-ahead to detail the eating habits of monarchs from Queen Victoria onwards (reader tip: get the aspic ready). “It was her final [jubilee]. I can’t remember which,” he recalls. “Diamond, maybe?” Platinum, Tom. “Platinum! That’s right.” He smiles, hyper-nonchalant, always respectful.

His party days: “I still look back on those raving days as some of the happiest of my life. It was ten thousand people in a warehouse, or a field, dancing together. I still love dance music, I still love Ibiza, but things are very different. I think DC10 has got a VIP area now.” He looks absolutely disgusted. “It’s appalling.”

He’s on a health kick ahead of his 50th birthday: “I was like: ‘Right, I’m getting too fat.’” He fretted, cameras looming. A restaurant dweller by profession and proclivity, he cut out drinking entirely, then kept it to four days a week and started exercising. “It’s called reformer Pilates,” he emphasises earnestly into my recorder of his routine. He feels lots better, even if he was hoping for more dramatic results. “​​Listen,” he says, leaning in conspiratorially, “I’m far too old to care about this sort of thing, but I went to my doctor the other day, who I love, and I said, ‘Can I have some Ozempic please?’” He just went, ‘F-ck off.’” Parker Bowles honks with laughter. Why? “‘You’re a food writer. All these excess calories are coming from booze.’” I said, “But I don’t drink three days a week!” “It’s the other four days I’m worried about,” came the reply. “He worked out that the [weekly] rosé in summer is equivalent to, like, 18 cheeseburgers.”

The nepo baby: A self-described “geek”, he adored the research – chancing upon 100-year-old biscuit recipes kept at Windsor – and was granted access to the kitchens and libraries of some of the royal archives (go figure). It’s a family affair at this point. “Yeah, I know full well: nepotism, blah, blah, blah. Fair game,” he says, meaning it. “But I thought, ‘You know what? In my defence, I can say that I’ve had 25 years of keeping away from it. If I’d come in and said, ‘Hey, guys. This is going to be the exclusive royal family cookbook’, I think that would be a bit of a sellout. But I approached it as I approach every other book.”

On King Charles & Queen Camilla: “She’s tough,” he says. But then came genuine woe. “Cancer, it really is a bastard,” he says of King Charles’s diagnosis in February with an undisclosed variety. “The King’s having the best treatment. He’s a great man and a tough man, and you’ve just got to get on with it. Of course, anyone who has someone they love with cancer is going to worry.” He checks in with the Waleses, of course – “I absolutely adore both of them” – and of the Duke of Sussex remains similarly fond: “I keep out of it,” he says, of the disparate, adult lives of stepsiblings. “You just want everyone to be happy.”

[From British Vogue]

Prince William and Harry were never particularly close to Camilla’s kids, Tom and Lara. I doubt they step-siblings have ever paid that much attention to each other or spent significant time together. This was never a “blended family.” Charles chose Camilla and her children, and Diana’s sons were largely left out in the cold. That’s just FYI – what Tom says here about “adoring” Will and Kate and his fondness for Harry is just posh BS. I also think Tom is so well-connected, he knows exactly what’s going on with William and Kate. I doubt it’s a secret among that class. As for what he says about losing weight… alcohol will get you every time. Cutting out alcohol is one of the easiest ways to lose weight, and you can’t Ozempic your way out of it if you’re boozing it up four days a week.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.