SPLASHING through the breakers on an Australian beach, Prince Charles was ambushed by a stunning bikini-clad model who promptly planted a kiss on his cheek.
The young woman, Jane Priest, would later tell how an awkward Charles — obeying royal protocol — did not reply, “Pleased to meet you” but “Oh, I can’t touch you”.
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Charles talks to a married Camilla at a polo match in 1975Credit: Rex Features
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Model Jane Priest planted a kiss on Charles on a 1979 visit to AustraliaCredit: Camera Press
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Charles arriving at Cardiff Docks for a visit to the city in 1976Credit: Times Newspapers Ltd
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Pilot Charles flying a helicopter with the Royal Navy in 1974Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
It was 1979 and Charles, then 30, was described by Fleet Street scribes as the “world’s most eligible bachelor”.
The picture caused a sensation across continents and was a glimpse of the excitement that would be generated when he finally chose the woman he would marry.
It later emerged that Jane Priest’s stolen kiss was a put-up job by a newspaper.
Yet the clamour — from his family and public opinion — for him to finally settle down was reaching fever pitch.
In the 1970s, protocol dictated that for an heir to the throne, a suitable bride meant either a foreign princess or the daughter of a senior British aristocrat.
But Charles had long heeded the advice of his mentor, great-uncle and godfather, the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten.
Mountbatten counselled on Valentine’s Day 1974 when Charles was 25: “In a case like yours, the man should sow his wild oats and have as many affairs as he can before settling down.
“But for a wife he should choose a suitable, attractive and sweet-charactered girl before she has met anyone else she might fall for.
“It is disturbing for women to have experiences if they have to remain on a pedestal after marriage.”
Socially shy and awkward, with jug ears and a weak chin, Charles was not classic Casanova material.
Yet while studying at Cambridge he discovered he had a way with the opposite sex.
Aged 19, the Prince had his first serious romance, with Lucia Santa Cruz, the daughter of the Chilean Ambassador to London.
Lord “Rab” Butler, the Master of Trinity College where the Prince was studying, is said to have slipped Lucia a key to his lodge to allow her and Charles to be together.
As Butler’s wife Mollie put it, Charles “cut his teeth” on Lucia.
Their relationship lasted from 1968 to 1970 but they remained friends and Lucia was invited to his second wedding.
According to Coronation Street and Carry On Cleo star Amanda Barrie, it was she who had been lined up to pop Charles’s cherry.
She claimed that the actor James Robertson Justice, a friend of Prince Philip, asked her to his house in Scotland to meet the young Charles, then at Gordonstoun school, to “help in the initiation of the future king”.
Amanda revealed that James, an upper-crust star who played Sir Lancelot Spratt in 1960 comedy Doctor In Love, said it was the “ultimate compliment, but don’t be offended by it”.
Amanda added: “He said he was one of eight people who had been selected to help ‘launch the royal males into their future life’.
“He actually said, ‘We don’t really want people who are experienced but, on the other hand, well, obviously they have to know the ropes.
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Charles in military uniform on his 26th birthdayCredit: Keystone Press Agency
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Charles with first flame Lucia Santa Cruz on their way to the theatre in 1970Credit: PA
“Frankly, the main thing one needs is a sense of humour and I know you have got that.”
No cash was offered. Amanda would be doing it for the privilege. But it was not to be.
Recalling the proposal, Amanda said: “I had this terrible image of having to face the Queen over breakfast. What would she say? ‘So, Amanda, how was it?’.”
When she turned the actor down, he told her, “Please don’t tell anyone”. So she did not for years.
Charles graduated from Cambridge with a 2:2 in June 1970, the first heir to the throne to earn a university degree.
He then embarked on a military career befitting a future monarch.
In his second year at Cambridge he had trained with the RAF, and in March 1971, he flew himself to RAF College Cranwell to train as a jet pilot.
After the passing-out parade that September, he then followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather and embarked on a naval career
He enrolled in a six-week course at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth before serving on the guided-missile destroyer HMS Norfolk and the frigates HMS Minerva and HMS Jupiter between 1971 and 1974.
When Jupiter docked in San Diego, California, Charles met Laura Jo Watkins.
She was the daughter of a US admiral who had been unable to make it to the welcome party and had sent her instead.
Beautiful and blonde, Laura Jo went on several dates with Charles and wrote to him afterwards, but as a Roman Catholic she was never suitable royal marriage material.
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Charles with It girl Sabrina Guinness at polo in 1979Credit: Empics
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Charles with Lady Sarah Spencer, Diana’s older sister, in 1977Credit: Corbis – Getty
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Charles courting Lady Camilla Fane, daughter of the Earl of WestmorlandCredit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
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Charles talking to BBC press officer Jane Wellesley in 1977Credit: News Group Newspapers Ltd
She was invited to London to witness his maiden speech in the House of Lords but the romance fizzled out after a weekend in France.
In 1974, Charles qualified as a helicopter pilot then joined 845 Naval Air Squadron, operating from HMS Hermes.
In February 1976, he took command of coastal minehunter HMS Bronington for his last ten months of active service.
While on Bronington, he dated a receptionist at the British consulate in Montreal called Janet Jenkins.
She was his secret lover and confidante throughout the 1970s.
They allegedly met again after he had married Diana.
Charles’s Action Man image — he parachuted, played polo and rode to hounds — seemed to have a beguiling effect on a string of women.
Most of his romances were with bluebloods from titled families or from the higher echelons of society.
There was Sibylla Dorman, daughter of the Governor of Malta, and Cindy Buxton, daughter of Lord Buxton of Alsa, founder of Anglia TV.
She went on to become a distinguished wildlife documentary maker.
Then there was the Duke of Wellington’s daughter Jane Wellesley, a BBC press officer who later formed her own production company.
Charles’s hunting grounds for a wife were the great country estates of Britain.
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The Prince with Lady Davina Sheffield in the mid-1970sCredit: Photographers International
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According to Coronation Street star Amanda Barrie, it was she who had been lined up to pop Charles’s cherryCredit: Getty
The aristocratic women he found there could be trusted to remain discreet — even decades later.
He courted Lady Jane Grosvenor, daughter of the Duke of Westminster, and Lady Camilla Fane, daughter of the Earl of Westmorland.
The beauties he romanced were dubbed “Charlie’s Angels” by the Press.
They included Fiona Cottrell, a former glamour model who had posed in Penthouse several years earlier.
The Prince would woo them with endless nocturnal telephone calls.
Yet the restrictions of palace life must have weighed heavily on their minds.
Beautiful and well-bred Lady Davina Sheffield, the granddaughter of ICI magnate Lord McGowan, dated Charles in the mid-1970s.
But it emerged she had shared a cottage with an ex-boyfriend, unforgivable in a potential Princess of Wales in those days.
As the prince passed his 30th birthday, he was dating 24-year-old It Girl Sabrina Guinness.
Prince Philip did not approve — she gone out with Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson and Rod Stewart.
And when she came to stay at Balmoral for the first time, the Queen is said to have snapped at her: “Don’t sit there, that’s Queen Victoria’s chair.”
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Charles courted Lady Jane GrosvenorCredit: Rex
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By 1980 Charles was dating Anna Wallace known to her friends as WhiplashCredit: Express Newspapers
Aged 31, and under increasing pressure to settle down and produce an heir, Charles proposed to one of his Charlie’s Angels.
She was Amanda Knatchbull, daughter of Lord and Lady Brabourne, and granddaughter of his beloved mentor Earl Mountbatten.
Charles had known Amanda since her childhood.
On meeting her again on holiday in 1973 when she was 15, he wrote to Mountbatten saying: “I must say, Amanda really has grown into a very good-looking girl — most disturbing.”
There were no romantic overtones until Amanda was 17 but her parents thought she was still too young for the glare of publicity.
They decided against Mountbatten’s suggestion that Amanda accompany Charles on an official 1980 trip to India.
Months later, when Amanda was 21 Charles popped the question.
“What a funny idea,” she said, and politely declined.
Perhaps Charles’s inability to find a bride was also due to his own reticence.
For he had already met the woman who was the love of his life, but circumstance had kept them apart.
His first girlfriend, Lucia Santa Cruz, had been the matchmaker.
On a warm summer’s day in June 1971 she bounded up to Charles at a Windsor polo match and insisted she had found “just the girl” for him.
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Fiona Cottrell – former glamour model who posed in Penthouse
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Charles proposed to one of his Angels – Amanda KnatchbullCredit: Getty
The girl’s name was Camilla Shand, a former debutante.
Her relationship with Army officer Andrew Parker Bowles had ended in 1970 and he was courting Charles’s sister Princess Anne.
Soon Charles and Camilla were an item, meeting at polo matches and exclusive club Annabel’s in London’s Berkeley Square.
The relationship was clearly serious. Charles met Camilla’s family and she met some of his.
Then things were put on hold in early 1973 when Charles was posted overseas with the Royal Navy.
Later that year their relationship was over.
Camilla announced her engagement to Andrew Parker Bowles.
Charles wrote to Lord Mountbatten saying: “I suppose the feeling of emptiness will pass eventually.”
Charles and Camilla remained friends, and when Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979 she provided comfort and solace.
The pair became lovers once more.
However, her past meant that under protocol at the time she could never be his wife.
So Charles’s search for a bride continued apace.
By 1980 he was dating Anna Wallace, 25, known to her friends as Whiplash.
But after almost a year they had a furious row at a ball in honour of the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday.
While Charles mingled with guests, Anna felt she was being ignored.
She was overheard shouting at him: “I’ve never been so badly treated before in my life. No one treats me like that, not even you.”
Another relationship had perished.
In July 1980, Charles was invited to stay at the Sussex house of Philip de Pass.
Also in attendance was Lady Diana Spencer.
Diana would later say in tapes given to author Andrew Morton: “The first night we sat down on a bale at the barbecue at this house and he’d just finished with Anna Wallace.
“I said, ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral. It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen.
“My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought, ‘It’s wrong, you’re lonely — you should be with somebody to look after you’.”
A year later and Charles and Diana were married.
