Truth behind the moment model Jane Priest planted a kiss on King Charles on Cottesloe beach

It was March 1979 and King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, was in Australia to represent his mother, The Queen, at the 150th anniversary of Western Australia.

The royal tour took Prince Charles, then 30, to a number of locations, including Perth's Cottesloe beach, where Australian model Jane Priest was waiting to pounce.

As Prince Charles emerged from the water, she planted a kiss on the then 30-year-old heir to the throne. The image would then be beamed around the world.

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But what the world didn't know then was that the seemingly impromptu kiss was actually set up by the Prince's own office, reportedly to overhaul his public persona.

Priest finally came clean about the interaction during a 2012 interview with Britain's Evening Standard.

Priest, once a well-known model, revealed not only that the kiss was set up, but that she even met with Prince Charles the night before to make sure she was suitable for the job at hand.

"My meeting with Charles on the beach wasn't my suggestion, it was theirs," she recalled.

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"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."

Whether Prince Charles got cold feet, or just wanted it to look that way, as soon as Priest began to walk towards him he took off.

"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," she recalled.

"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.'"

So she quickly planted a kiss on his cheek and the images were quickly beamed around the world.

Ms Priest also revealed she brought her then five-year-old son, Simon, with her that day and he was sitting on the beach building sandcastles during her life-changing moments.

"I was in my mid-20s. Here was one of the most powerful men in the world and he was absolutely adorable," she said.

"I was totally overawed for those couple of minutes."

But she said she never thought for a moment the kiss would turn into something else.

"This was a five minutes of fame thing. I was never going to be Queen Jane, let me tell you," she said.

"Apart from anything else, my background wasn't clean enough,"

King Charles' 1979 visit to Australia saw him spend four days on the Coodardy sheep station near Cue, 620 km north-east of Perth.

The tour later took him to Canberra, where he visited the Australian War Memorial.

There he was pictured with children examining a display of decorations won by Australian servicemen in Britain during World War II.

At the end of the tour, he holidayed on Lizard Island, off the coast of north Queensland.

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