Tom Parker Bowles is the son of the queen (consort) by her first marriage. Camilla Shand was an untitled but well-connected aristocrat who romanced then-Prince Charles and Andrew Parker Bowles at the same time. Camilla ended up marrying APB first and having Tom and Lara, but she also carried on with Charles throughout her marriage to APB. APB was in a similar situation as Camilla – somewhat in the “aristo” set, but neither Camilla or APB came from wealthy families. Tom and Lara were raised the same way most aristo kids are raised, with benign neglect and a lot of freedom. Tom had huge drug problems when he was younger, but he seems relatively stable now, a divorced dad who is still close to his ex-wife and probably treats his kids a lot like Camilla and APB treated him. Well, Tom is now talking about how he would have turned out completely different if his family had a lot of money or if he had a trust fund.
Tom Parker-Bowles has revealed that not having a trust fund when he was younger ‘probably’ saved his life. Queen Camilla’s eldest child, 50, based in London, delved into the importance work has had on his life in the podcast White Wine Question Time. He told host Kate Thornton that if he had a trust fund and did not have to work for financial stability, his life would look very different.
‘Sadly, no trust fund. You know, actually, it’s a good thing not having a trust fund. I’d probably be dead if I’d had one,’ Tom said candidly on the podcast’s latest episode. He added, ‘Obviously, I had to work like everyone. You know, you have to work. It’s important. So, I stumbled somewhat into food writing, 25 years ago when the landscape was rather different.’
Before falling for food writing, Tom worked various jobs, including a brief stint in PR. He recalled, ‘I worked for a wonderful film PR company called DDA and they used to run Cannes and you’d be looking after talent. So you’d be taking Alicia Silverstone round London in the ’90s or Anna Friel or whatever. So it wasn’t exactly the most arduous task for a straight man. It wasn’t the most arduous of jobs, but I was always late. I’m still friends with my bosses, Stacey and Dennis, and they’re lovely people. But eventually, enough was enough. I got sacked… So anyway, I was sitting around thinking, you know, what the hell am I going to do?’
Tom later settled on food writing and is now a regular contributor to the Mail on Sunday and Country Life.
The first time I met someone with a trust fund, I was in college. It was fascinating to me, that some normal guy who lived a normal college life just… had all of that money sitting there in a trust fund. It’s what you make of it – I’m not particularly pro- or anti-trust fund, although I think it’s smarter when the parents or grandparents set it up so that the trust can only be touched (for non-education purposes) when the person is, like, 27 or 30. No one needs access to a trust fund when they’re 18 or 21. I think that’s what Tom is thinking about as well, how he would have pissed away that money on drugs and good times at that age. As for his general finances these days… I’ve believed for some time now that Camilla has quietly ensured that her children and grandchildren receive tidy sums of money. There’s even been gossip that Charles and Camilla *did* set up trusts for Lara and Tom at some point, which I think would mostly be about Camilla’s grandkids.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
