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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Mangan

Queen Camilla: The Wicked Stepmother review – what is the point of this dull rubbish?

Queen Camilla at the state opening of parliament in July.
Queen Camilla at the state opening of parliament in July. Photograph: Eddie Mulholland/Reuters

I feel like I’ve missed a memo. Is it Camilla Awareness Month or something? Two weeks ago, we had 90 minutes on her charitable activities in ITV’s Her Majesty the Queen: Behind Closed Doors – which, to be honest, amply satisfied my interest in the lady, fond as I am of a doughty dame. Now we’ve got Queen Camilla: The Wicked Stepmother, a documentary about absolutely nothing we haven’t heard before. It looks like the Christmas ruining of the TV schedules has already begun. Seems to come round earlier every year, does it not?

Anyway. To business. Posh folk alongside less posh biographers and journalists assemble to talk about Camilla’s “remarkable rise” to queendom. We begin with her childhood. She was born in a Nottinghamshire mining town and ate nothing but mice and boot blacking until she was four, when she followed her father down t’pit and got to share his midday break and a cup of pneumoconiosis every Thursday.

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