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.’

Tom Parker-Bowles (seen at Cheltenham Festival in 2024) said he would ‘probably be dead’ if he had a trust fund

‘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.

It comes after Tom recalled the embarrassing gaffe he made when he met Queen Elizabeth II for the first time. 

The food critic was discussing his new book, Cooking & the Crown, which traces the history of royal culinary cuisine through the tastes and preferences of Britain’s king and queens. 

Speaking to The Independent, Tom said the book was originally only going to include royal recipes and anecdotes between the reigns of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, giving him a ‘degree of separation’ since he had only met the late monarch twice. 

The first time was when he was eight, Tom recalled, adding: ‘I was so scared that I curtsied rather than bowed.’ 

When greeting the monarch or a member of the royal family, men traditionally bow their heads (a neck bow) while women do a small curtsy. 

The next time he would meet the late Queen would be on the occasion of Camilla’s wedding to King Charles, when he and his sister Laura Lopes ‘snuck out for a fag or something’ and got lost in Windsor Castle. 

Tom (seen with Queen Camilla at his book launch in September, 2024) said he ‘had to work like everyone’

When the brother-sister duo were discovered by the ‘magnetic and lovely’ Queen, who was accompanied by her beloved corgis, Tom said they ‘followed [her] like two rather terrified but awestruck puppies’. 

Since the queen’s death, his book has became somewhat ‘closer to home’, with Tom including his mother Camilla’s recipes as well as the secret to preparing his stepfather’s favourite green omelette. 

Tom appeared on an episode of the ITV1 programme Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh to promote Cooking & the Crown, which was released in September last year. 

During his segment on the show, Tom shared that food was always an important part of family life when growing up in Wiltshire with his mother and his father, Andrew Parker Bowles, Camilla’s first husband.

He described Camilla as a ‘good cook, a very basic English cook’ who hates following recipes and isn’t fond of baking.   

Tom told Titchmarsh: ‘My father was, and still is, I was about to say, great gardener, a good gardener in your company. He’s a good gardener. He was very obsessed with his vegetable garden, so we… could follow the seasons through the garden.

‘And my mother was a good cook. Still is a good cook, a very basic English cook. Didn’t like baking, didn’t like measurements… no scales, And no recipes either.

‘You know, her roast chicken, I bang on about endlessly… “well, you just do it.” So you’d have to sort of watch.’ 

Tom (seen with Camilla) revealed that he was fired from his job in a PR company when he was younger

Queen Camilla acknowledged her culinary skills are ‘limited’ in an interview with Tom Tom in Mail On Sunday’s You magazine in 2022. 

Describing her culinary style as ‘nothing too mucked about, or fussy or fiddly’, Camilla said she learnt to cook by watching her mother, Rosalind Shand, who made food the ‘heart’ of family life.

‘One of my earliest memories is podding those peas and beans with my mother, an accomplished cook,’ she said. ‘I learnt from my mother. I’ve never followed a recipe in my life.

‘On Friday nights, we were allowed to choose our dinner,’ she recalled. ‘I always went for frozen chicken pie, much to my mother’s despair.’

Tom recently also revealed his mother Camilla isn’t a part of their family’s WhatsApp group, because she still uses an old Nokia brick phone ‘for security reasons’.   

He also confessed he has a hard time getting a hold of his mother since she became Britain’s Queen Consort, adding he only learns of her whereabouts when Tom sees her on TV. 

He told Woman & Home magazine: ‘She’s working a lot harder, she’s always worked quite hard [so] it’s still the case of, I ring my mother, she doesn’t answer, I look on the television [and think] “Ah! She’s in Jersey.”‘ 

Royal fans will not be surprised to learn about the Queen’s choice of phone, as she has previously revealed she tells off her grandchildren for using their phones at the dinner table.

Speaking to the Mail in 2022 ahead of her 75th birthday Camilla expressed her concerns about social media, which she described as a ‘double-edged sword’, and admitted she often tells her grandchildren to put their ‘flipping’ phones away.  

‘Families don’t sit down any longer, do they, and have dinner,’ she said. ‘Because I am ancient, in the old days we all sat down [to eat]. Now everyone is on their devices. It just makes me quite cross!’ 

Tom shares two children, 17-year-old daughter Lola and 15-year-old son Freddy, with his ex-wife Sara Buys.