Truth about Charles's famous kiss

When the Prince of Wales heads off to Australia next week, his thoughts, as ever, will be of the woman he plans to marry in six weeks' time. But when he arrives in Perth on Tuesday he might just permit himself a moment's reminiscence about another woman, a kiss, and a brief encounter on a Western Australia beach which sent pulses racing a quarter of a century ago.

The year was 1979, the scene was Cottesloe Beach, Perth - and the bikini-clad beauty pouncing on Charles was a 26-year-old model called Jane Priest.

The picture of her splashing through the surf to land a smacker on the startled-looking Prince went round the world, bringing Ms Priest instant notoriety and giving Charles something of an image makeover.

Thanks to that one photograph the world got the impression that he was no longer the shy, awkward, rather reserved young man of repute, but the sort of fellow that gorgeous young girls race across the beach to kiss.

But now, as the Prince revisits Perth 26 years later, we can reveal that not everything in the picture was as it seemed. Although no one realised it at the time, that kiss was an early example of royal spin - a calculated attempt to improve Charles's stuffy image by having him photographed on the beach with an attractive young Aussie.

After being picked for the job, Ms Priest even had to meet the Prince the night before to make sure she was suitable.

Ms Priest told the Evening Standard: "It's when I see pictures of Charles that it all comes flooding back. I was in my mid-twenties, here was one of the most powerful men in the world and he was absolutely adorable. I was totally overawed for those couple of minutes.

"My meeting with Charles on the beach wasn't my suggestion, it was theirs," added Ms Priest, who is now 51.

"It was a PR thing to try and make Charles more accessible. It was a set-up photograph of the Prince of Wales meeting an Australian native, but 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. 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.'"

Another aspect of the original kiss which passed unnoticed at the time was that Ms Priest was a single mother when she kissed her Prince. Her five-year-old son Simon - now a scientist - was sitting on the beach a few yards away building sandcastles.

After making the front page of just about every newspaper in the Western world, did she regret that she didn't make a deeper impression on the future king? "This was a five minutes of fame thing. I was never going to be Queen Jane, let me tell you. Apart from anything else my background wasn't clean enough."

Since 1979 she has been a successful model, got a Fine Art degree, worked in television and is now on her second marriage. Her husband John Baylis is a self-made millionaire who runs a hospitality group. "John and I married in 1996 and I've been deliriously happy ever since."

Which, given one thing and another, is probably all for the best.