Charles gets his own loo seat, we get £170m for charity... Bargain!
IIMAGINE we are all supposed to be feeling shaken by the latest tumbril-rumbling ‘revelations’ about Prince Charles, but I confess – having just gobbled a delicious account of the outrageous caprices of the late Princess Margaret – I can’t get enough of this stuff.
So what’s the best the renowned giant-slaying specialist Tom Bower has got in his sizzling new shocker about the heir to the Throne?
Well, Chas was once invited to stay somewhere in the North East of England. In precaution, he sent a pantechnicon containing all of his bedroom furniture – and I mean everything from orthopaedic bed to organic food to his required rolls of Premium Comfort loo paper ‘and two landscapes of the Highlands’ – a day early so that his flunkeys could refit the guest room down to his exacting and princely spec.
He once took 43 pieces of luggage to stay on Mt Athos, a pure, male-only precinct of holy austerity in Greece. His personal policeman carries a pre-mixed martini for him wherever he goes.
Moving on, when I read (or reread?) his supposed utterances, from ‘nobody knows what utter hell it is to be Prince of Wales’ to calling his life ‘an intolerable burden’ and complaining that he ‘pulled the short straw’ to King Constantine of Greece, I know what I’m supposed to think too.
Just as Jacob Rees-Mogg has been dissed as the barmaid’s idea of a gentleman, the heir to the Throne is being framed as the commoner’s idea of a pampered prince, who goes around complaining that he didn’t ask to be born to be King. Boo hoo.
The problem is, from where I sit in my tracksuit bottoms in my basement kitchen eating my Alpen from a mug, I can only marvel at the continuous superhuman efforts and resources that the Prince devotes daily to maintaining his own stratospheric standards of luxe.
And the important thing is, this eccentric, almost psychotic level of commitment extends to his causes and not just to his own comfort. You won’t, I expect, be reading the following in selected extracts, but since 1976, Charles’s charity, The Prince’s Trust, has helped 870,000 disadvantaged young people.
Last year, he raised £170million for charity and carried out 600 engagements. Last week alone, he hosted nurses in Buckingham Palace, launched a charity to boost ‘heritage skills’ in this country, even went to the seventh circle of Hell (i.e. Heathrow) to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Terminal Five, and met Al Gore to talk about the environment, which you will agree is beyond the call even for a member of The Firm.
BUT no, you won’t be reading that because it’s far more fun to read about his travels with his own loo seat. (‘Ancient fiction,’ a Royal source told me. ‘The toilet seat story has been following him around for years even though it was a joke birthday present from his sister.’)
It’s obvious that Prince Charles is less thrifty and stiff upper lip than his parents. But has he ever pretended otherwise? Extravagant, petulant, self-indulgent, self-pitying – what’s not to like?
Call me a fawning lackey till the cows come home (and don’t get me started on Camilla, who is down to earth, fun, unpompous etc), but Charles is also thoughtful, dutiful, driven… and a man who has done more for others and the environment than any member of the Royal Family.
If the ‘revelations’ do manage to stir your Republican blood, remember this: just think if Air Miles Andy had been born first, not the pampered prince.