Charles 'too late to wed Camilla'

Prince Charles has missed the chance to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, the senior aide behind their public acceptance has claimed.

Mark Bolland, Charles's former spin doctor, fears the fallout over the Paul Burrell trial has ruined their marital prospects.

Asked if Charles would ever marry Camilla, Mr Bolland, 38, said: "I think there was a window within a year or so after the Queen Mother died... when all the indications of opinion were in the right place.

"I don't think it is like that now. He is cloaked in controversy." Mr Bolland also dismissed as "absurd" suggestions that Charles was bisexual. In an interview with The Times he said: "It really was preposterous. He's a man who pays a lot of attention to his appearance - but a lot of straight men are like that."

Openly gay Mr Bolland cited how Charles admired models at a Versace show: "I always remember him leaving a Versace show and talking to his bodyguard about the models, Naomi Campbell in particular. It was very much a boys' conversation.

"I said I felt very much excluded and he said, 'But Mark, there was plenty for you to look at as well'.

"He's very liberal and there isn't an ounce of homophobia in him, but there's no way he's got tendencies in that direction."

His comments come as Mr Burrell today claimed Charles was unfaithful even to his mistress. The former royal butler, 46, claims in the updated paperback version of his book, A Royal Duty, that Princess Diana wrote a year before she died: "Camilla is nothing but a decoy." He claims: "Camilla was his principal mistress, she was not the only one. He could not help wandering."

Mr Bolland, former deputy private secretary to Charles, has not seen Camilla, to whom he was very close, or his former boss since last October after the Prince's new private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, hurried his departure. Mr Bolland, the media adviser credited with most improving the Prince's image, has previously attacked the "snooty men in grey suits" who run the monarchy as being "out of touch".