What do you buy the man who has everything for his 70th birthday?
Even the Duchess of Cornwall is scratching her head when it comes to choosing a gift for her husband Prince Charles.
With just days to go until his birthday on Wednesday, Camilla admitted: “People keep asking me if I have brought him a present and I haven’t. He is the worst person. He has a list (containing porcelain and items for the garden) and I’ve learnt through 13 years of being married that it is better to stick to the list. He has a lot of things, but he knows what he likes and if you give him a present, he says, ‘Oh that’s lovely,’ when he doesn’t think it’s lovely at all.”
The Duchess, 71, spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail earlier this week after a gruelling morning on the couple’s West African tour, where she undertook several engagements in Ghana, including a meeting as patron of WOW, the Women of the World Festival. She praised a group of young Ghanaian campaigners looking to bring the concept to their country as they spoke about the issues affecting them most, from social justice to sport, women’s rights and enterprise.
Reminded of how she told the Mail on his 65th birthday that her one wish for her workaholic husband was for him to slow down, she said: “As the French say, plus ca change! It doesn’t get any better. In fact, the older he gets, the more driven he gets.
“I remember my father, who was a very wise man, always saying to me, ‘As you get older, the one thing you have to do is pace yourself.’ So I’ve tried to get that over to my husband, but I’m afraid to say it’s fallen on deaf ears. He thinks, ‘I’ve got so much to do. I’ve got to cram it into these years!’ Suddenly you get to 70 and a sense of mortality hits you. I just think he wants to get everything done and dusted.”
Camilla: Charles ‘worst person to buy gift for’
