Britons shrug off nude photos of partying Prince Harry
LONDON >> Britain’s Prince Harry has been caught on camera doing something embarrassing — again.
Celebrity gossip website TMZ on Tuesday posted photos of the 27-year-old royal cavorting nude with an unidentified woman in a VIP suite in Las Vegas. It’s hardly the first time the prince — who allegedly disrobed as part of a game of strip pool — has been filmed misbehaving. The third-in-line to the throne was famously photographed wearing a Nazi uniform for a costume party, and in another photo-gaffe he was seen cupping the breast of a female TV presenter. Some would argue footage in which he was heard to utter a racial slur while teasing a fellow army cadet from Pakistan was more serious.
Prince Harry’s office confirmed Wednesday that the photos were of the prince but declined to make any further comment.
The blurry, low-resolution photographs appear to have been snapped from inside a hotel suite, and it isn’t clear that the prince was aware that they were being taken.
That could be a violation of the royal’s privacy. It might also explain why Britain’s scandal-hungry tabloids — normally avid consumers of titillating photos — were steering clear of the images.
Interviews with Londoners up and down the capital’s Prince of Wales Road yielded few critics of Harry’s antics.
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“He’s the prince. He can have any bird he wants!” said Craig Martin, 38, a construction worker.
Caregiver Shirley Ashard laughed at the news of Harry’s naked adventure, dismissing questions about the propriety of running around a plush hotel room in the buff with a boys-will-be-boys shrug.
“I’ve got kids. They do things like that,” the 59-year-old said. “He’s a lad, for God’s sake.”
Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said Harry’s party-boy image was part of his approachable, normal persona.
“Of course it’s stupid, but it doesn’t make people dislike him — quite the opposite,” she said.
“It shows that he is a guy who gets into trouble and he’s the one people love to love. It could only happen to Harry — but we love him for it.”
She did think, though, that Harry might get a talking-to from Prince Charles. “I would think his father would speak to him,” she said.