THERE have been some memorable moments in the Duchess of Cornwall’s transformation from clandestine paramour to very public wife of the future King. There was the infamous and excrutiating “Camillagate” tape; the first official photograph of the couple on the steps of the Ritz; the televised wedding blessing in St George’s Chapel.

And yesterday, in the Street of the English Lady in Cairo, there was another landmark in the unfolding story of her life in the media spotlight. The Duchess held out her flat hand to feed a tasty morsel to a convalescing Arabian horse. The grateful beast gobbled it up, the flashbulbs exploded and the Prince of Wales whispered to his wife the true importance of what had just happened: “Your first carrot, darling.”

It was almost certainly not her first carrot, of course. She owned her first pony at the age of 5, so it is a fair bet that she has fed a few hundred pounds of carrots to equine friends. But the Prince appears to enjoy sharing his wife’s little media baptisms.

The couple were visiting the Brooke Hospital for Animals, a British-based charity that was born in Cairo in 1934 after Dorothy Brooke, an Englishwoman, was horrified by the plight of beasts of burden in Egypt. Now the charity, the biggest for working equines in the world, operates in several countries and, through mobile clinics and hospitals, reaches more than 300,000 horses, donkeys and mules in Egypt.

The Duchess attended a Brooke charity event in Aberdeen a couple of years ago and this visit was at her behest. “That’s how this came about,” said Lady Hilary Weir, chairman of the trustees. “The rest of the programme is things he wants to do.”

Before they arrived, a man with a large pooper-scooper was keeping busy, leaping into action as soon as one of his charges demonstrated obstinate indifference to the imminent arrival of royalty in the sandy donkey corral. Amro Mahmoud, one of the vets, insisted that such an efficient clean-up operation was routine and had nothing to do with the VIPs. “We clean it every moment,” he said. “Day and night.”

The Arabian horse introduced to the royal visitors had been ill-treated while working at the Pyramids, where it took tourists for rides. It had been badly tethered and the sores on one of its legs had become so infected that it was lying on the ground close to death when it was rescued.

The Duchess was so touched by the plight of the animals she saw that she promised her hosts that she would support the charity. “It’s so thin. It’s so very, very thin,” she grimaced when shown a carthorse, one of a half-million-strong army of working beasts in the Egyptian capital. An animal that was recovering after being hit by a car on one of the city’s heart- stoppingly perilous thoroughfares reared back when the Prince tried his hand at the carrot trick. His wife had to move in and show him how it was done.

The Prince was taken with the donkeys, many of which had deep lacerations on their noses from being forced to wear overly tight harnesses. “Are they organic?” he asked. This is one of the Prince’s standard questions but this time it was a little joke.

He was in good spirits, apparently amused and pleased by the interest in the minutest details of his, or rather his wife’s, every move on this trip. (Memo to fashion watchers: she was wearing a lime-green chiffon dress and jacket by Robinson Valentine and shoes by L K Bennett.) The Prince even made another of his little jokes as he passed the huddle of press: “I hope you are taking copious notes.” Seasoned royal correspondents had to think back a long way to the last time he had been so chatty.

The Duchess struggled a little in her wedge heels in the sand. “Hang on to me,” the Prince said, happily.

Duchess's date with Calendar Girls

THE Duchess of Cornwall is to join the Women’s Institute after being inspired by the real-life Calendar Girls. She signed up after meeting some of the members from Yorkshire who stripped off for a charity calendar and later became the subject of a Hollywood film.

The Duchess is now eligible to attend monthly meetings at the village hall in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, near The Prince of Wales’s Highgrove home. She will be invited to take part in cake sales, charity events and community campaigns.

But the Tetbury WI president Judi Mason-Smith said that it was unlikely that the Duchess would be stripping off for a calendar. “We are honoured that Her Royal Highness is joining us,” she said. “We would be very pleased to welcome her at our meetings. But even though she was very impressed with the real Calendar Girls from Yorkshire, I don’t think she will be following in their footsteps.”

The Duchess was inspired to join after Barbara Gill, the president who died in November, had taken the six women whose story was the inspiration for the film to visit her and the Prince at Clarence House last June.

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