Toff His Head
“‘INSTANT JUSTICE’ TO NAIL THE YOBS,” announces the Sun, adding approvingly that police chiefs are demanding powers to bar the aforementioned troublemakers from town centres.
One candidate for such powers – let’s call him Harry Baseball-Cap – has been making a nuisance of himself in central London for some time, and his antics have gained him a certain notoriety in the pages of the Sun itself.
The paper describes how he smokes, drinks, “gropes pretty girls” and “enjoys lap-dancing” (whether as spectator or dancer it doesn’t say). He is often present during night-club brawls, although not as a participant, as the papers are always careful to add. Ditto his obvious refusal to join his “dope-smoking friends” in their filthy habit.
They are careful to add these qualifications because the estate from which this particular yob hails is a royal one. He is of course Prince Harry, and that makes quite a difference. Far from decrying his boorish behaviour, the Sun claims that “his popularity has sky-rocketed” and “he is now being hailed as the greatest playboy prince”. Furthermore, “Girls dream of a date while guys list Harry as the person they’d most like a beer with.”
A survey of the Anorak offices reveals a slightly different result. The “girls” put Harry below Tony Blair, Julian Barnes and Fred West on their list of dream dates, and he failed to make the “guys’” list of drinking companions at all.
Indeed, old Mr Anorak says he would rather be tied to a radiator and forced to drink Terry Waite’s urine. But no matter, we accept that the Sun is more in tune with contemporary Britain than we are.
“So what is it about this shy, loveable rascal that makes him impossible to dislike?” asks the paper. That is what’s known as a rhetorical question, as the answer clearly lies in the smoking, drinking, lap-dancing, etc.
But we ask the same question in a spirit of genuine enquiry. If any readers would like to persuade us of his hidden charms, we would be delighted to hear from them.
In the meantime, the paper asks another question: “Is Harry history’s WILDEST prince?”
Well, there was Prince Albert, whose name will go down in history as both a cock-ring and a genital piercing. Then there’s The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, who wowed a generation with his libidinous pop music and far-out threads. Then there was Prince Michael of Kent, with his masonic apron and his fun-loving wife…
But let’s face it, they’re history. Harry is the face of today and tomorrow. If fact, the Sun claims that “the future of the Royal Family may yet lie with the pin-up prince with a glint in his eye.”
Pin-up prince? Over to you, readers…
Posted: 16th, August 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
