As we discussed, Queen Camilla pulled out of attending the Royal Variety show at the last minute on Friday. King Charles went stag and he looked profoundly unwell. Camilla was supposed to be the sick one, and that was the reason given for her sudden absence: she was still suffering with a lingering chest infection. Or was that a cover story? The Daily Beast’s Royalist column added this interesting wrinkle in their coverage:

Queen Camilla’s decision to skip the Royal Variety Performance this week, palace sources told the Daily Beast, was due to a “lingering” chest infection. She appears to have been suffering with it since her return from the royal tour over three weeks ago. The decision to cancel won’t have been taken lightly by the palace, which is acutely aware of the optics of an ailing, elderly monarchy. King Charles is 76 and Camilla is 77.

Camilla personally, however, may not have been too upset at missing the famously middle-brow live show, which this year featured such luminaries as “Britain’s Got Talent” show winner Sydnie Christmas, with one friend telling us, “It’s not exactly her thing.”

[From The Daily Beast]

I have no idea why the royals act like the Royal Variety show is such a chore – it’s a fundraiser for retired entertainers, and the show is just like… comedians, skits and music. It should be such an easy event? Why is Camilla acting like she’s too good for it? She horses around with C-listers all the time. The Windsors are all starf–kers – they love to hang out with reality stars, actors and the like. Meanwhile, there’s probably another reason why Camilla has been pulling a disappearing act: last night, Channel 4 aired a documentary about Cam and people are talking.

A new documentary which branded Queen Camilla as a ‘wicked stepmother’ has been slammed as ‘tedious’, ‘needlessly tacky’ and ‘dull’. Critics have blasted the programme, which aired last night on Channel 4 and spoke to journalists and insiders about the royal’s past – as well as her reportedly fraught relationship with Prince Harry.

The Duke of Sussex, 40, last year seemed to surface familial tensions when he, speaking in an interview with Anderson Cooper to promote his memoir, described Camilla as ‘dangerous’ and a ‘villain’. He said: ‘She was the villain, she was a third person in the marriage, she needed to rehabilitate her image. That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British Press. And there was open willingness on both sides to trade information and with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being Queen Consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street because of that.’

The documentary, titled Queen Camilla: The Wicked Stepmother?, in a synopsis questions: ‘How did Camilla Parker Bowles ascend from most hated woman in Britain to Queen Camilla, national treasure? And was her transformation at Prince Harry’s expense?’

However, with two-star ratings across the board from major critics, it was poorly received, largely for rehashing old material with little new insights, and doing so in a ‘tacky’ way. The Guardian found the programme ‘tedious’ and ‘flimsy’, claiming that there was no real need for the documentary to air. Elsewhere, The Times branded Channel 4’s offering as a ‘ranty mess’ that ‘doesn’t serve anyone’. The Telegraph’s Arts and Entertainment Editor meanwhile said that the movie was a ‘needlessly tacky deep-dive’ into Camilla’s past.

[From The Daily Mail]

I’m just here to point out that if any British channel aired a documentary about Prince Harry or Meghan, the Mail would have devoted twenty articles to every single little detail in the documentary like it was all new information. From what little I’ve seen online about the doc, it was a rehash of just how thoroughly Camilla and Mark Bolland threw Harry under the bus constantly in his teens and 20s, and how Charles was absolutely fine with Camilla sacrificing his relationships with his sons. While it’s old news to all of us, the thing is… a lot of people don’t know. A lot of younger people, especially. So it’s good to remind everyone – Camilla has always been horrible. She set out to destroy Diana, and then she set out to destroy Diana’s sons.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.