LONDON: Britain's Prince Harry has been caught on camera doing something embarrassing - again.
Celebrity gossip website TMZ 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 earlier photographed wearing a Nazi uniform for a costume party. 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.
If the reaction of Britons to Harry's Las Vegas adventure was anything to go by, the nude photos will do little to tarnish his generally positive, party-prince image.
Referring to the prince's naked romp and asked if Harry had done anything wrong, Jim Conlon, a 60-year-old construction worker said, "No." Conlon was genuinely offended by the very question. "I'd be proud of him if he were my son," he said.
Conlon's opinion was typical of a country where thousands of streets and pubs are named for the royal family. Polls published earlier this year showed support for the monarchy at an all-time high, perhaps buoyed by the celebrations surrounding Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee celebrations marking her 60 years on the throne.
Interviews with Londoners up and down the capital's Prince of Wales Road yielded few critics of Harry's antics.
Craig Martin, 38, another construction worker, said: "He's the prince. He can have any bird he wants!"
Down the road, 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 romp will not harm his image or that of the royal family. Seward felt 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. Prince Harry's office confirmed yesterday 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 if 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 were steering clear of the images.
Ashard said the only outrage she could muster was against the photographer.
"That's out of order," she said. "How would you like it if someone took pictures of you in your hotel room?"
