My budgie smugglers? I’ll NEVER squeeze into them again!
At nearly 70, Charles has Australians in stitches over his ‘tight genes’ BUDGIE? YOU COULD GET A WHOLE AVIARY UNDER THAT GRASS SKIRT. . .
UNEASY lies the head that wears a crown. But among his many cares of office, it seems Prince Charles has an unexpected anxiety – that never again will he fit into a pair of skin-tight ‘budgie smugglers’.
While the swimwear may not be traditional court dress, the senior Royal – who turns 70 in November – appeared to bemoan a lack of age-appropriate beach attire as he continued his tour of Australia.
He even admitted, somewhat alarmingly, that his advancing years coincided with ‘bits falling off’.
In his younger days, the Prince was famously photographed on a Perth beach in 1979 being embraced by model Jane Priest – although back then, he chose to avoid close scrutiny by opting for a more modest pair of bathing shorts.
His swimwear lament came during a speech at a reception in
‘Bits of me keep falling off at regular intervals!’
Brisbane where Charles described his great love for Australia, a nation he first visited as a teenager.
He said: ‘It is hard now, I find, to believe that all these years have actually passed by, or that I shall soon be 70. It’s not very long ago I remember my parents being 70, let alone my grandmother being 70!
‘I do know only too well – and understand – the strange feeling of disbelief that this is actually happening and that never again, for instance, will it be possible to squeeze into a pair of budgie smugglers! I don’t know about you but now bits of me keep falling off at regular intervals! “Don’t worry,” they keep telling me, “you have brilliant genes!” But the trouble is, I can’t even get into them either!’
Charles described how as a 17-year-old he was tormented by venomous wildlife while attending a remote school in Victoria – Timbertop – for two terms. He also noted how he discovered that Australian manhood was ‘partly defined by how many schooners of beer you could line up on the bar – and drink – before the pubs closed early!’
Charles is being accompanied on his seven-day tour Down Under by the Duchess of Cornwall. But he made a brief trip alone to South Pacific island Vanuatu – where his father, Prince Philip, is worshipped. There, he was made a ‘Paramount Chief’, complete with his own grass skirt and giant palm leaf. Wearing a lightweight suit and tie with the skirt wrapped around his waist and a garland round his neck, the Prince posed happily in his native attire.
More comfortable, perhaps, than a pair of budgie smugglers.