Brilliant moment King Charles was kissed by scantily clad Playboy model in a bikini… and the fun story behind it
EMERGING from the sea at an Australian beach after a pleasant morning swim, Prince Charles appeared to have no idea what was about to happen.
From nowhere, a woman dressed in only a bikini rushed up and planted a kiss on the Royal cheek, in an instant creating an unforgettable image that went around the world.
As the King marks his coronation, we take a look back at one of the most unusual episodes in his life and the quirky background to it.
The year was 1979 and the 30-year-old future monarch was on an official trip to Australia as a representative of the late Queen.
In March, he was in Perth part of the state of Western Australia’s 150th anniversary celebrations when he ventured down to Cottesloe Beach for what had become a regular run and swim during his visit.
At the time Charles was single with his love life as an eligible bachelor under the microscope and had been linked with a number of blue-blooded and society beauties.
Strange as it might seem now for a man so passionate about environmental causes, Charles’s military service in the RAF and Royal Navy helped create something of an action-man image.
So when 26-year-old model Jane Priest ran up and planted a smacker on Charles’s cheek it all seemed to chime with his eye-for-the-ladies image.
Former Playboy model Priest became a global sensation as pictures of her and a bemused Charles in his swimming trunks made the front pages back in the UK.
Down the years, the layers of this apparent outpouring of affection have been peeled back to reveal it may not have been that spontaneous.
Priest explained that the whole episode was “a PR thing to make Charles more accessible” and reportedly even met him the night before to make sure she was suitable.
But when it came to the actual day, things didn’t quite go as planned when “he threw a spanner in the works”.
“When he saw me he dived into the water, so I thought I’d follow him in, but as I went in, he got out,” she told the Evening Standard.
“So I followed him out, hair ruined, make-up ruined, and I felt like such an idiot.
“I actually went and put my hands on his chest to give him a kiss and Charles said: ‘No, I can’t touch you, I can’t touch you.'”
Priest went on to graduate from university then became an artist and married John Baylis, a wealthy businessman, in the 1990s but the experience remained with her.
“I was in my mid-twenties, here was one of the most powerful men in the world and he was absolutely adorable,” he said.
“I was totally overawed for those couple of minutes.”
But as the late Queen would put it “recollections may vary” and the photographer who took the picture has told a different story about what happened.
It was not a PR stunt to improve the Prince’s image but a cook up between him and a local journalist.
Kerry Edwards said it “certainly wasn’t the case” that Charles’s PR people had a hand in the stunt.
He explained that the fact the “prince was having a daily run and swim on the beach” had not gone unnoticed.
“So the media and the international media gathered here every morning to record the event,” Edwards said in an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC.
“Towards the end of the week, I decided, working for a Sunday newspaper, we should glamorise the situation a little more.”
“I was actively involved with the social writer for the Sunday Independent and a couple of phone calls later we found a willing person to come along and have a swim with Charles.
“I think it was good for Cottesloe, probably good for Jane Priest.”
The intrigue doesn’t end there and another photographer has said it was in fact him who set the whole thing up.
He said the Prince used to go to Cottesloe Beach at 6.30am.
“I had the idea and said ‘wouldn’t it be great a lovely young model’,” he recalled in the 2013 documentary ‘Royalty Close Up: The Photography of Kent Gavin’.
“So I said to Jane when he comes out of the water run up and kiss him. So she’s over there, she’s standing and I said ‘right go now’.
“He knows he’s been set up as his royal protection officer said ‘it’s a set up sir, it’s a set up.”
Gavin said he told Charles “I admire your taste in women, she’s a very beautiful girl” but he turned around and “walked off”.
On a return trip to Perth, Prince Charles was asked about his memories from previous visits to the city.
“Recollections of swimming very early in the morning down the beach,” he said.
“When one or two people were detailed off to run up from the surf and do unmentionable things to me.”