Engineer claiming he is Prince Charles and Camilla’s love-child says he had visits as a child

A man who believes he is the love child of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall has claimed he had secret visits with a woman he thinks was Camilla as a child. 

British-born engineer Simon Charles Dorante-Day, 55, who now lives in Queensland, was conceived in 1965 and born the following April in Gosport, near Portsmouth. He claims that his adoptive grandmother told him the Duchess of Cornwall was his mother back in 1998.

Having since ‘done his research’, Simon is convinced he now has enough proof – along with his his ‘Windsor-like cheek-bones and teeth’ and ‘Camilla-style hair’ – that his claims are true. He has said a number of times that he would like a DNA test to prove his family link and wrote to the couple in 2012.

Charles and Camilla have never responded to his claims. 

Appearing on This Morning today he said that in 1971, the same year Charles joined the Royal Navy, he overheard his mother and grandmother talking about ‘visitations’ which ‘had to stop’, before being introduced to a woman resembling Camilla and a man in a naval uniform. 

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British-born engineer Simon Charles Dorante-Day, 55, who now lives in Queensland, believes he is the secret love child of Prince Charles and Camilla

Dorante-Day claims he had secret visits with two people that could be Charles and Camilla at the age of five or six, around 1971 when Charles joined the Royal Navy (pictured in 1975)

‘I walked out from my mum and dad’s, they lived in a semi detached house and nana and grandad lived next door, so [I] used to be able to walk from one to the other around outside. 

‘I was walking around to Nana’s one day when I was about five or six and heard Nan say to mum, “The visitations have got to stop, he’s going to remember them”. 

Dorante-Day says he was taken to a nearby house in Portsmouth, which was being used as a house for Ministry of Defence naval officers, and met someone resembling Camilla with a man in a naval uniform. 

He said: ‘I went inside, I can remember a lady sitting on the sofa who in my mind is about Camilla at the time and there was a gentleman dressed in a naval uniform to the right of me, in front of the grandfather clock saying quite clearly saying “We’re buggered now”. 

If Mr Dorante-Day’s allegations are true, he would have had to have been conceived in 1965, when Charles (right) was 17 and Camilla, 18. Mr Dorante-Day is pictured left as a teenager alongside Charles as a younger man

Dorante-Day asserts that, at the age of eight months, he was adopted by a local Portsmouth couple called Karen and David Day. 

He says his adoptive grandparents, Winifred and Ernest Bowlden, had both worked for the Queen and the late Duke of Edinburgh, who died on April 9 aged 99, as a cook and a gardener in one of their royal households.

He claims Ernest received an Imperial Service Award for his work for Her Majesty, and that his adoptive grandmother told him many times that Charles and Camilla were his real parents, and that Camilla kept him until he was given up.

‘She didn’t just hint at it, she told me outright,’ he said in a previous interview. 

Dorante-Day claims Camilla used protection officers and royal family connections to help her keep him a secret, but it was arranged that Winifred would have her daughter adopt him when he became ‘too old’. 

Simon Dorante-Day, who believes he is the love child of Prince Charles and Camilla, shared an image comparing his 14-year-old son to a young Queen Elizabeth

While his grandparents may well have worked for the royal household, Dorante-Day claims his grandfather Ernest Bowlden received an Imperial Service Award for his work for the Queen.

However he does not appear to be listed on any of the Queen’s Birthday or New Year’s honours lists since her coronation in 1953. 

Dorante-Day claims his research suggests Charles and Camilla first became close in 1965, with one report alleging he said they met at Winston Churchill’s funeral in January of that year.  

As he was born in April 1966, Dorante-Day would have been conceived in the summer of 1965. He claims in the months before he was born, Camilla disappeared from the social scene for at least nine months, while Charles was sent to Australia.

As a young boy he claims he has recollections of being taken to houses in the Portsmouth area and would spend time with a woman he believes was Camilla, with his adoptive parents and royal protection officers waiting outside.

Mr Dorante-Day claims his adoptive grandparents Winifred and Ernest worked for the Queen and Prince Philip as a cook and a gardener respectively and told him ‘many times’ that he was ‘Charles and Camilla’s child’ 

Dorante-Day says his adoptive grandparents, Winifred and Ernest Bowlden, pictured, had both worked for the Queen and the late Duke of Edinburgh

Charles, who was born on November 14, 1948, was 16 when he attended Winston Churchill’s funeral, along with 6,000 other guests. It’s not known if Camilla Shand – then aged 17 – was among them, and there’s no evidence the two met at the event. 

At the time, Charles was studying at Gordonstoun school in Scotland, and in early February 1966 he travelled to Australia for two terms at Timbertop, the rural campus of the Geelong Church of England Grammar School in Melbourne, where he remained until July 1966.

Meanwhile Camilla – who was raised in East Sussex and South Kensington – was a debuntante in London on March 25, 1965 and photographed throughout that year at balls and parties. 

It is said that within just a few days of her coming out party, the future Duchess of Cornwall lost her virginity to a gentleman called Kevin Burke, which was allegedly what prevented her marrying Prince Charles in her youth.

Simon Dorante-Day was born in Gosport, near Portsmouth, in April 1966, and was adopted at eight months old by British couple Karen and David Day

Mr Dorante-Day, who is pictured with his wife Elvianna, often posts updates on his bid to be recognised by the royal family to Facebook

It is believed that Camilla and Burke dated for a year, with him describing it as ‘the best time’, adding: ‘I remained with Camilla all that year. I suppose we were in love. Then she ditched me.’ Camilla is then said to have begun a relationship with Rupert Hambro, of the banking dynasty before falling for Andrew Parker Bowles. Throughout this time she is not known to have exhibited any signs of pregnancy or birth.

It’s been widely reported that Charles and Camilla met at a polo match in Windsor Great Park in 1970. Legend has it that she introduced herself with the line: ‘You know, sir, my great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-great-grandfather – so how about it?’ – a reference to Edward VII and his mistress, Alice Keppel. She eventually married Charles in 2005, 10 years after her divorce from Andrew Parker Bowles in 1995. 

Dorante-Day claims his birth certificate is ‘complete rubbish’, alleging the hospital where it states he was born didn’t deliver a single baby during the decade he was born.

He also says the names given for his birth parents are ‘fictitious’ and that the documentation he has from his adoption is written in his adoptive mother’s handwriting.

Members of the Royal Family – Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, Princes Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones – attending the funeral of Winston Churchill on 30th January 1965

Dorante-Day has said there are ‘lots of bits of evidence’ of this nature that he requires further proof to back up, such as handwriting analysis, before he takes it to court.    

According to a Quora thread, Dorante-Day has never disclosed the names on his birth certificate or the hospital in question, making it hard to verify his claims.

The poster also claimed that his theory is not probative anyway as ‘people do sometimes give birth unplanned in hospitals without maternity services if they present in labour too advanced to be moved’.  

Dorante-Day regularly shares side-by-side comparison photos of himself and his children with members of the Royal Family, which he claims reveal a striking similarity.

On a photo of himself as a young man, he wrote: ‘Good quality shot – the Camilla style Hair doesn’t miss.’

Mr Dorante-Day (right) snapped a photo with his son Liam (left), 14, last week while on a fishing trip at Bribie Island

Another acquaintance noted how much he looked like a young Prince William, while others said he shared the Queen’s bone structure. 

Today he appeared on Sunrise claiming his son is the spitting image of a young Queen Elizabeth, telling hosts David Koch and Natalie Barr: ‘I think the evidence speaks for itself.’

Dorante-Day snapped a photo with his son Liam, 14, last week while on a fishing trip at Bribie Island. He then shared it to his Facebook page, where he often posts about his alleged blood relation to the royals.

‘I just shared it with the people on the page and a lady took the photo and changed it into black-and-white and rotated it and put it alongside the Queen,’ Mr Dorante-Day said. ‘I said every day, when I get up in the morning and the kids speak to me, the first thing I see when I turn around, is that, so it is always in my face.’

Dorante-Day has brown eyes, and according to reports, once claimed that his eye colour was changed in some kind of operation when he was small. Charles and Camilla both have blue eyes.  

Dorante-Day reportedly hasn’t disclosed his medical records for this period to confirm if his eye colour did change.

It is possible for children to have completely different eye colours than either of their parents, however darker colours tend to dominate. It isn’t common for blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed child, but it is possible. 

In an interview with New Idea in February 2019, Dorante-Day said he believes Princess Diana knew of his birth and that she had been preparing to ‘go public’ before her death in 1997.  

Charles only met Diana in 1977, at which point he was in a relationship with her sister Sarah. They reportedly next met in 1980, and married the following year (pictured leaving St Paul’s after their wedding rehearsal)

He said: ‘At the time, there were all sorts of rumours flying around about the Royal Family, and my existence was one of them.

‘I think Diana was at a point where she was finding out answers about her life, how she was wronged, and she was going to go public with it.’

While it’s not possible to verify if this were true, given Dorante-Day alleges he was born out of a love affair between Charles and Camilla while they were still in their teens, it begs the question why Diana would necessarily feel ‘wronged’ by his existence.

Charles only met Diana in 1977, at which point he was in a relationship with her sister Sarah. They reportedly next met in 1980, and married the following year – by which point Camilla was married to Andrew Parker Bowles.

According to Charles’ authorised biography, he began an affair with Camilla in 1986.