One would warrant a princely sum to tend to Charles

IT must be pushing on for 20 years since I read Tom Bower’s hugely entertaining hatchet job on former Harrods majordomo Mohamed Al-Fayed. His biographies of Robert Maxwell and Richard Branson are still lurking somewhere on my bookshelves.

For reasons that escape me, though, I’ve never gotten around to reading his later books – which, by all accounts, are equally fascinating – on the likes of Conrad Black,

Bernie Ecclestone and Simon Cowell. But if the serialisation of his new opus on Prince Charles is anything to go by, Bower is still firing on all cylinders. There were several laugh-out-loud moments in the excerpts published in the Mail on Saturday. I was particularly amused by the palaver surrounding a visit by HRH to a pal in the north of England.

By way of an advance party, he sent a truck carrying the contents of his and Camilla’s entire bedrooms. Not only that, he also insisted on dispatching a personal supply of whisky and loo roll. He even packed his own toilet seat and a couple of paintings of the Scottish Highlands.

Granted, myself and Charles come from different walks of life. But when I went to stay with a friend in the north of England last weekend, I didn’t bring much more with me than a clean shirt, a change of underwear and a toothbrush.

Suffice to say that he sounds like one very high-maintenance royal indeed. I’d imagine his travelling staff – a butler, chef, two valets, typist, private secretary and bodyguards – more than earn their money. The same presumably applies to the remainder of his retinue. Still, we shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised at any of this. Back in 2004, Charles was quoted as saying: ‘Nobody knows what utter hell it is to be the Prince of Wales.’

I’d said it many times before in these pages, but it bears repeating. Never, ever trust a man who refers to himself in the third person.