Camilla the MAN EATER: She was fired from her posh job for too much partying and revelled in the fact her great-grandmother was Edward VII's mistress - her biographer reveals how she REALLY spent the Swinging Sixties

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From femme fatale to distinguished royal consort, life’s journey for the Duchess of Cornwall has never been anything less than long and bumpy.

Now, aged 69, she inhabits calmer waters. Yet it seems only yesterday that, as Camilla Parker Bowles, the Duchess was Public Enemy No 1.

But the world moves on. These days, she’s a global figure, jetting off on a gruelling tour of the Middle East with her husband Prince Charles, playing an important part in securing the friendship of Arab nations and spreading goodwill. And enjoying herself in those dusty countries where, because of a lack of Press freedom, there’s never a whiff of scandal around a royal personage.

With Rupert Hambro, of the banking family. While the unwritten rule of the Season was ‘good girls don’t’, Camilla did. Pretty soon they were lovers

Not that these days there’s very much that’s scandalous about Milla, as she was briefly known at secretarial college in the Sixties. But still the occasional nugget pops up to keep us intrigued.

For example, in her new book On The Fringe, interior decorator Imogen Taylor reveals how the Duchess was fired from one of the few jobs she held down before her 1973 marriage to a cavalry officer.

Enthusiastic party animal that she was, Camilla was sacked for being late for work at the posh interior designers Colefax And Fowler after attending a dance the night before.

Miss Taylor, now 90, recalls: ‘There were a lot of debutantes working for us, including Camilla. She worked for us for a moment, but then got the sack.’

At the time, Camilla was sharing a flat with a fellow ex-deb Jane Wyndham, who went on to find fame in the world of interiors as Jane Spencer Churchill.

At the time she was sharing a flat with fellow ex-deb Jane Wyndham, who went on to find fame as Jane Spencer Churchill (left, pictured in 1984). Camilla was not considered to be a beauty compared to Lady Mary Gaye Curzon (right)

Jane took her job at Colefax And Fowler seriously; Camilla was more light-hearted about forging a career.

As a girlfriend of the time put it: ‘Nine-to-five wasn’t important. Evenings, weekends, horses, hunting, people, parties, that’s what counted for Camilla. She moved with a lively crowd.’

Lively they were, as we shall see.

Imogen Taylor recalls that Camilla’s downfall was occasioned by her boss Tom Parr, a temperamental man prone to explosions of rage.

‘He would shout and bellow so the building heard every word,’ recalls Miss Taylor. He’d roar: ‘ “Get out, you silly b***h. Go — leave at once! I can’t have people like you in the firm!” when some poor girl had merely folded something the wrong way or done something very minor.

Camilla, now the Duchess of Cornwall, on a later date with Prince Charles, who she married in 2005

‘The Duchess of Cornwall was one assistant who fell victim to his tantrums — she came in late having been to a dance.’

But then life at the time — the mid to late Sixties — was one long party for Camilla.

As I revealed in my biography, A Greater Love, it all kicked off with a drinks party in March 1965 which signalled her launch as a debutante.

The Season, as it was called, was a highly competitive social merry-go-round where the girls who got the most attention were the prettiest.

Camilla was not one of them when compared with the likes of Lady Mary Gaye Curzon, the loveliest girl of that year (and mother of Prince Harry’s ex-squeeze Cressida Bonas).

For a while, her soldier boyfriend was two-timing her with Lady Caroline Percy, daughter of the Duke of Northumberland

But what she lacked in conventional beauty was more than made up by her personality and undeniable sex appeal.

She was still only 17 but one of the guests at the party was Rupert Hambro, of the banking family, and while the unwritten rule of the Season was ‘good girls don’t’, Camilla did. Pretty soon they were lovers.

Others claim the person who took Camilla’s virginity was Kevin Burke, an independently wealthy 19-year-old who was then a handsome fixture on the deb scene.

‘She was terrific fun, immensely popular, and although she wasn’t a beauty like Mary Gaye, she was attractive and sexy,’ recalled Burke later. ‘She was never tongue-tied or shy, she always had something amusing to say.’

He added: ‘I remained with Camilla all that year. I suppose we were in love. Then she ditched me.’

Pretty soon she bumped into a cavalry officer called Andrew Parker Bowles — his brother Simon worked for her father Bruce Shand at his upmarket wine merchant’s called Block Grey And Block. All very traditional.

With Lt Col Andrew Parker Bowles, after he collected his OBE, alongside son Tom and daughter Laura in 1984

But they weren’t called the Swinging Sixties for nothing, and while her flatmate Jane followed the traditional deb route, marrying Lord Charles Spencer Churchill, brother of the Duke of Marlborough, Camilla and Andrew swung.

As the Mail’s legendary diarist Nigel Dempster later wrote: ‘Andrew lived in a bachelor apartment in Notting Hill and it was there that he and Camilla began a very hot affair.

‘Andrew was an accomplished lover and quickly proved himself to be an unfaithful one, too — he had a penchant for beautiful titled women, including Lady Caroline Percy and Lady Amabel Lindsay.’

Her jilted lover Kevin Burke recalled how much store Camilla placed in the fact that her great-grandmother Alice Keppel had been Edward VII’s mistress.

Perhaps out of revenge, Camilla cast her eye about, too. Her jilted lover Kevin Burke recalled how much store Camilla placed in the fact that her great-grandmother Alice Keppel had been Edward VII’s mistress.

‘She was always mentioning it, as if it were something almost talismanic,’ he remarked.

And so we can see where the seeds were sown for the greatest royal love affair since Edward and Mrs Simpson. But that was still some way in the future — there were a few more parties to go to first!

For a while, her soldier boyfriend was two-timing her with Lady Caroline Percy, daughter of the Duke of Northumberland.

‘I certainly knew I wasn’t the only person being taken out by him at the time,’ Lady Caroline later recalled. ‘There were always other girls and older women.

‘I never knew Camilla very well when we came out, but when I was with Andrew she would come up to me at parties and ask me what I was doing with her boyfriend.

‘Camilla was always doing this to girls. But I got fed up with it and I said to her: “You can have him back when I’ve finished with him.” ’

And so the partying went on, with Andrew picking up and dropping Camilla at will.

‘He behaved abominably towards her,’ recalled Lady Caroline, ‘but she was desperate to marry him.

‘He behaved abominably towards her,’ recalled Lady Caroline, ‘but she was desperate to marry him'

‘When I was with him, I also discovered he was having an affair with a married woman.’

Camilla responded to this ungentlemanly treatment by going back to Rupert Hambro. ‘He still remembers the masochistic glee she took in telling him about tricky situations that Andrew’s unfaithfulness sometimes caused,’ said Dempster. ‘But she often saw the funny side of things afterwards — she had the funniest lines and best anecdotes.’

Parker Bowles became the love of Princess Anne's life, in precisely the same way that Camilla was to become the love of Prince Charles’s

In 1969, Parker Bowles was posted to Germany with his regiment, which gave Camilla time to draw breath and look around.

On his brief returns home, he was up to his old tricks again, this time taking up with Princess Anne, who at the time was dating Brian Alexander, the son of war hero Earl Alexander of Tunis.

Parker Bowles became the love of Anne’s life, in precisely the same way that Camilla was to become the love of Prince Charles’s.

After flatmate and Colefax And Fowler colleague Jane Wyndham married Lord Spencer Churchill, Camilla moved into a ground-floor flat at the back end of Belgravia with another ex-deb, Virginia Carington, daughter of Lord Carrington, who would be Foreign Secretary in the Thatcher government.

The writer Gyles Brandreth describes the scene: 'Her bedroom looked like a bomb had hit it. Virginia was fairly tidy and organised and Camilla drove her nuts, in the nicest possible way. Virginia once told me: “You know, Camilla has this inability to hang anything up on a hanger.

‘"And she has an aversion to cleaning fluids of any description. You should see the state of the bathroom when she’s been in it.” ’

Perhaps that explains why she looks so untidy in the first photo of her and Prince Charles. They are pictured against a tree in Windsor Great Park, staring deep into each other’s eyes.

Camilla moved into a ground-floor flat at the back end of Belgravia with another ex-deb, Virginia Carington (left, on her wedding day to Lord Ashcombe, right, in 1973)

Camilla, unlike the other polo girls with their neat skirts and Gucci scarves knotted under the chin, is in a polo shirt and jeans.

With Andrew abroad again, she had taken to going to polo matches at Windsor with her friend Carolyn Gerard Leigh, daughter of the chairman of the Guards Polo Club. One of the young stars on the field was, of course, Prince Charles — and before too long Camilla had engineered an introduction.

‘My great-grandmother and your great-great grandfather were lovers — so how about it?’ is alleged to have been her conversational opening gambit. If she didn’t actually speak those words, her eyes said them for her.

Charles was smitten with Camilla - but as far as marriage was concerned, there were too many strikes against her

Charles was smitten.

So why, then, didn’t Charles marry Camilla, and Andrew marry Princess Anne — preventing all the heartache and terrible, awful embarrassment which was to follow?

Andrew being a Roman Catholic could have been a factor. In the early Seventies, the idea of the Queen’s daughter marrying into a Catholic family was repugnant to traditionalists (though the rules have eased since). As for Charles marrying Camilla, there were too many strikes against her.

She’d had her fair share of lovers and, ridiculous as it may seem now, it was expected that the future King would marry a virgin; all sorts of names might have embarrassingly popped out of the woodwork if they became engaged.

As if that wasn’t enough, the prejudice of the court was against Camilla — her background and lineage were deemed insufficiently grand. Her father’s family bore no title and as for her mother’s side. . . well, the less said about the royal mistress Alice Keppel, the better.

Camilla Parker-Bowles and Lady Diana Spencer, later the Princess of Wales, at Ludlow racecourse to watch the Amateur Riders Handicap Steeplechas

And so Camilla went ahead with her seven-year campaign to marry her soldier boy. It broke Charles’s heart, and it broke Princess Anne’s.

Within weeks, Anne had found herself another cavalry officer, Captain Mark Phillips, while Charles went into limbo, dating scores of pretty blondes without the slightest intention of marrying any of them. His thoughts were only for party girl Camilla and once her first child was born, their affair resumed with increased passion.

As the years rolled by, Charles, urgently prodded by his parents, idly proposed marriage to a couple of girls, Amanda Knatchbull, granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten, and Anna ‘Whiplash’ Wallace, daughter of a Scottish landowner. But both knew about his obsession with Camilla.

So, too, did Diana, but that’s another story altogether.

Today, many decades on, the forthcoming royal tour of the Middle East will present the one-time party girl, once fired for being late for work, as a hardworking woman taking part in 50 engagements, and doing her best to cement relations in a notoriously tricky region.

Once, her life resembled a Georges Feydeau farce. Now it’s a force — for good.