Mad about Harry
PRINCE HARRY ON THE COVER OF TATLER
BY CLEO GLYDE
09 TH OCT 2012
He has thoughts. He has feelings. He looks great on a balcony. Why England’s party-prince humanises the royal house of Windsor.
Tatler has quite rightly read the mood and put Prince Harry in full military regalia on its latest cover, splashed with the affectionately satirical title "Dirty Harry", a tone that is as much a magazine signature as country houses and next-generation countesses riding to hounds.
As the royal family emerges from many an annus horribilis – there is a whole new generation to take the baton, with the reboot of a beautiful new bride and Prince Harry cast as the loveable rogue.
A prince of the blood, that heady cocktail of alpha male appeal and great uniforms, Prince Harry has enough brave recklessness and military dedication to save him from mere dilettantism – he pushed hard to be let go to Afghanistan with his troops. The early heartbreak of losing his mother at a tender age also adds an emotional depth to his charmed life.
Yet as an adult, his irrepressible impishness also spills over everywhere: doing "the Bolt" next to Usain Bolt on a running track, taking the mickey out of culture secretary Jeremy Hunt in a public speech, and then in Vegas, the outrageous party-prince shots that took Brand Harry cheek to the next level: cavorting nude in a strip billiards game with some local lasses.
But Harry passed the test – everyone loved it. “Prince Harry is EASILY the best Royal. Fully Regency. I say we let him build a pineapple-shaped building on The Serpentine IMMEDIATELY," tweeted DJ Lauren Laverne, referencing the fruity flamboyance of his early 19th century predecessors. Even the lefty Guardian winked, "I’m sorry, I just can’t get upset about it … That’s exactly how I want my princes to be behaving.”
“Harry’s the naughty boy – that’s his job now,” states Dr Giselle Bastin, royal expert at Flinders University and old school friend with whom I adore talking Tudors and Princess Diana endlessly over gallons of tea. “Now that William and Kate are doing the safe stuff so well, and hot on the heels of being asked by the Queen to represent her at The Paralympics, which is extraordinary, the public are giving him leeway to be his charming, clownish self on the side.”
While I’ll always hold a soft spot for the Edwardian eccentricities of the Queen and the endlessly horrified palace courtiers, I can’t wait to see what all-too-human Harry does next. Long may he reign terror.
