VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
It all started here, in the small country town of Shiphampton, deep in the heart of the Cotswolds, one of the most beautiful and prosperous areas of the UK. Camilla was born in nearby Princess Alice Hospital, Gloucester, in 1980, by which time her parents, Dick and Peggy, had been married for seven years and almost given up having a child. Right from the start, she was their miracle baby, indulged and doted on, and given every advantage money could buy, including a pony, music lessons, and a private ballet teacher.
RECONSTRUCTION of little girl doing ballet movements.
When she was six, the Rowans entered a nationwide competition to find a little girl to front a new TV advertising campaign for My Little Pony. There were over 5,000 entries, and Camilla made it through to a shortlist of six. This is her screentest.
CLIP of Camilla Rowan in close-up, sitting at a table stroking a My Little Pony toy and smiling. She has her hair in bunches and is wearing a pink dress with a lace bodice and puff sleeves. She has a gap in her front teeth.
CAMILLA
I just love My Little Pony, and your little girl will too.
VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
She didn’t get the gig.
Various shots of John on the phone, putting it down, leaving messages asking for a call back.
VOICEOVER – JOHN PENROSE
I contacted the Rowans a number of times through their lawyers while we were making this documentary, hoping they’d agree to take part, but they’ve refused to speak to anyone from the press ever since an incident a few weeks after the trial, when a journalist claimed Dick Rowan threatened him with a gun. The allegation was never substantiated and no charges were ever brought, but the extensive coverage of the incident provoked a fresh backlash against the family, along with threats of violence from certain quarters. So it’s perhaps understandable that the Rowans have tried to keep a low profile ever since. None of their other family members were willing to speak on camera either, probably for the same reason, but there was one person we were able to talk to: Sheila Ward, who worked for Dick Rowan for more than 20 years, and had a lot of contact with the family when Camilla was growing up.
Cut to: sitting room, gas fire, Border terrier on sofa, potted plants, etc.
TITLE OVER: Sheila Ward, Dick Rowan’s secretary, 1971–1996
SHEILA WARD
I knew Dick back when he was still just a builder. In the early days, when he’d just started out on his own and they were living in a semi in Gloucester. Back then he’d roll his sleeves up and plumb in a bathroom himself if he had to. But then he started to make money, and went into ‘property’ and they bought the house in Shiphampton. By the time Camilla came along they were moving in very different circles. I didn’t see them socially much after that. I’d babysit, but I didn’t get invited to many of their parties. Dick was a local councillor by then, and treasurer of the Shiphampton Rotary Club, and Peggy was doing a lot of charity work, and things for the school. She was always very much the power behind the throne.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
Were they good parents?
SHEILA WARD
Depends what you mean by good. They were quite strict. Peggy kept a big chart in the kitchen, showing what chores Camilla had done, and whether she’d got good marks at school or kept her room tidy. It had gold stars stuck to it and if she didn’t get enough stars by Friday her pocket money would be docked or she wouldn’t be able to have ice cream. And there was another big chart with her schedule. Brownies, ballet, swimming, piano. There were set times for everything. Of course when she was little Camilla didn’t mind – she just wanted to please them. She always wanted to please them. Especially her mother.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
What about as she got older?
SHEILA WARD
Oh, she still wanted to please them, so she kept to the rules. She just got cleverer about how she did it.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
And boyfriends – did the Rowans have rules about that?
SHEILA WARD
(laughs)
Oh yes – there were a lot of rules about that. Who she saw, where they went, what time they got back. But like I said, by that time Camilla had got a lot cleverer at bending them. And of course, they had no idea what she got up to at that school.
RECONSTRUCTION, soft-focus: girls playing hockey on sunlit playing field with Victorian buildings behind, girls walking in a crocodile wearing uniforms and straw hats, girls singing in a chapel choir, etc.
VOICEOVER
Burghley Abbey in Warwickshire is one of the most prestigious girls’ schools in England. Founded in the 19th century, it boasts celebrities and minor royals among its old girls. It’s very sporty, very musical, and very, very expensive.
Cut to: sitting room, evening. Lamps lit, fire in background, bookcases, oil painting on wall.
TITLE OVER: Marion Teesdale, Housemistress, Burghley Abbey School, 1986–2014
MARION TEESDALE
I sat in on Camilla’s admissions interview before she came to Burghley and I remember how confident she was, even at that age. She’d only have been around seven at the time, but she was very articulate, and very comfortable talking to adults. It was obvious that her parents had coached her – every time she answered a question she looked across at her mother for approval. Her father didn’t say a great deal – I got the impression he was quite reserved. Camilla started the following September as a day girl. It was a thirty-mile round trip to drop her off and collect her every day, and there was Saturday-morning school as well, but her mother insisted that she was too young to be living away from home.
JOHN’S VOICE (off)
Aren’t the fees cheaper for day pupils as well?
MARION TEESDALE
Yes, of course, but Mrs Rowan made a point of saying that that wasn’t the reason.
MONTAGE: sequence of images taking Camilla from junior to senior school, her face being circled each time in red pen. School photographs, sports team photos, on field trips, on a French exchange, etc. Last photo, of a hockey team, shows Camilla with her friends Melissa Rutherford and Leonora Staniforth.
Cut to: kitchen. Aga, hanging rack of copper pans, kids’ drawings stuck on the fridge, view of countryside from the window.
TITLE OVER: Leonora Neville, née Staniforth, Camilla’s school friend
LEONORA STANIFORTH
Cam, Melissa and me were best friends right from our first or second week at school. They sat us alphabetically in the first year so we were all in a line together and that’s pretty much how it stayed. Then Cam said we should call ourselves the chameleon girls, you know, from Cam–Mel-Leon – she was always really clever about things like that – and the name just stuck, especially with that Culture Club song.
Intercut: footage of the three girls wearing T-shirts with chameleons on, and their names printed below. They’re singing, rather raucously, lines from ‘Karma Chameleon’: “Didn’t hear your wicked words every day / And you used to be so sweet I heard you say”.
And it was sort of fitting that Cam’s name came first – she was always the leader, always out in front. She just had that sort of personality. Everyone wanted to be in her gang. Not that we had gangs at Burghley Abbey – way too common – but you know what I mean. And Cam was the only one in our year who had a swimming pool. Mel lived in Shiphampton too and I was only three or four miles away so I’d bike over and we’d spend hours round the pool in the summer, just hanging out. And her parents were always very welcoming. I think they were concerned about her having lots of friends because she was an only child.