While the nation pores over every detail of the Wills and Kate split, there is someone who is regretting the break-up for different reasons, and it’s not the makers of Woolworths’ prematurely commissioned royal wedding crockery. With Prince William and Kate Middleton no longer an item, expectations for the next royal wedding will focus on Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall, her rugby player boyfriend.

“It usually switches between the two of us,” says Phillips gloomily. “When they get bored with talking about when Kate and William will get married then usually it’s our turn.”

Phillips is keen to silence the rumour mongers before they get started. She and Tindall, whom she met during the Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2003, live together on her mother’s Gatcombe Park estate in Gloucestershire, but have no plans to marry. “Are we getting married?” she asks as I open my mouth to put the question. “No. Not yet. I haven’t been asked. And I’m not going to be announcing it in August or whatever it was everyone was saying a few weeks ago.

“Every time something goes in the papers, I get texts from all my friends asking ‘Are you?’ and I’m like, ‘Sorry, no!’”

Tindall is in no fit state to get down on one knee. The Gloucester and England player broke his right leg last weekend and will spend the next few weeks in plaster. Phillips can look forward to playing nurse and driving her hobbling boyfriend around in her Land Rover Discovery. Fortunately Tindall is notoriously laid back. “Even more laid back than me,” says Phillips, who speaks in a slow drawl, lightly peppered with yawns, having been up at 6.30am riding her horses. “But I’m not sure what Mike thinks of my driving, you’d have to ask him.”

The Discovery 3 is part of a deal with Land Rover that has made the Queen’s eldest granddaughter the face of its new advertising campaign. The first poster memorably showed Phillips in demure pose wearing a floor-length white Roberto Cavalli dress liberally splattered with mud along the hem. It seemed to capture Phillips’s determinedly unroyal style.

The company also sponsors her equestrian career. She won both the European and world eventing titles last year and is training for the Badminton horse trials next month, the contest in which many of the British eventing team hope to secure their places for the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Having been billed as something of a royal wild child in her teens — especially when photos revealed a tongue piercing — Phillips, now 25 and minus the tongue stud, is enjoying a new reputation as a world-beating sportswoman. In December she followed in the footsteps of her mother, Princess Anne, to be crowned BBC sports personality of the year.

“The press actually have something to write about now,” she says. “Before I did feel pressurised by it. It [the media interest] all started in my gap year and the thing is you’re supposed to play this role, you’re from this family. It’s weird. If you are just behaving normally that is seen as wrong, or not behaving as you should do.

“Winning the sports personality of the year award was great because the public voted for me. I never expected to win, it was a huge shock. I have a lot more people who come up to me now and say ‘Well done’, ‘We’re really proud of you’, things like that.”

Rather quaintly, she’s waiting to collect her MBE from the Queen later this year for her sporting achievements. She needs to give her grandmother a call about that. “I’ve no idea when it’s happening, perhaps I should ask. I’ve not seen my grandmother for a few weeks.”

She is at the stables most days from about 7.30am, riding her 10 horses and training through the afternoon. “We have an event every weekend from March to October, then training in the week and all the horses need riding every day. I do whatever needs doing.

“It’s good to have Mike because, as a sportsman, he knows what it’s like, he knows the pressures. We both know the huge disappointment when there is an injury, although with me it’s usually the horse.”

She insists her life is worlds away from the pampered chauffeur-driven “princess” some people might imagine. “What’s a chauffeur?” she jokes. “Really, I hardly ever go anywhere where I’d need a chauffeur and I don’t really like it, I just fall asleep. I prefer to drive myself. I like just throwing everything in the back of the Land Rover and off we go.”

She also has a Range Rover Sport as part of her deal with Land Rover and recently got her HGV licence. “I need it to be able to drive my horses around,” she explains. “I did an intensive course just a few weeks ago. I can now drive any truck up to 7,500kg, as long as it’s rigid.”

And how does she find life as a royal trucker?

“They’re great to drive until you get road rage because you can’t overtake. When people don’t indicate and things it’s so frustrating, and when people overtake and then pull in really close to you and brake and you think ‘Why did you do that?’ It’s annoying and until you drive a lorry you don’t appreciate it. The braking time is totally different to a car, and you’re trying to give the horses a nice ride as well.”

She hates driving in London but loves driving near her Cotswolds home and is a huge fan of Top Gear. “I loved the one where they made stretch limos and drove to the Brit awards and the one where they drove across Alabama. That was hilarious. And I like the ‘star in a reasonably priced car’.

“Would I like to go on it? Oh my God!” She giggles nervously. “I would go on with Mike and let him drive. I could shout instructions.”

Sounds like wedding bells.

On her CD changer

I usually plug in my iPod rather than listen to CDs. My favourites at the moment are Mika, Timbaland, Nelly Furtado and Maroon 5