Two cheers for Prince Harry, the royal Boris

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2012/aug/23/cheers-prince-harry-royal-boris

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Prince Charles is said to be furious. Buck House is embarrassed. Over several pages of titillating hand-wringing, the Daily Mail and Telegraph express deep concern. Yes, that "Prince Harry in nude photos" row is enlivening a quiet late August. And yet again I find myself warming to the lad. He is fast becoming the royal Boris.

I realise there is a recession on, that most of us can't afford a £450-a-night hotel suite and that even if we could many of us wouldn't choose Las Vegas. I've been there at least once, and once is enough. Its gangster image has long since been cleaned up, and nowadays it's more of a Disneyland for borderline grownups, a money-making machine in the Nevada desert, plastic-wrapped sin for all the family. Even the swimming pools are too shallow to swim in.

Never mind. Harry's 27 now – plenty old enough to vote and to fight for the Queen – and he wanted to go there on holiday with his Etonian posse. If his salary as an army captain and Richard Branson's Caribbean hospitality didn't pay all the bills, I'm sure Granny will see him right and that the taxpayer will help her out, much as we all help pay those Branson bills for the train set.

Scandalous, isn't it? As one prurient American TV host whom I spotted on YouTube put it with fake piety: "Harry's brother is saving lives as a helicopter pilot in Wales" while he's partying in Vegas. The presenter was grinning at the time.

I gave up looking for the grainy shots of the naked royal. I'm assured they're online if you look hard enough, but who cares. It's hardly worth the trouble navigating one's way through the nudge-nudge and the "show us the crown jewels, Harry" uproar of all those sites trying to make a buck out of TMZ's little scoop. So many awful people, most of them tanned and overweight. Welcome to Vegas, where the casino food and drink is often very cheap – free even – provided you're a gambler or a young woman.

We could talk all day about behaviour appropriate to a young royal, third in line to Granny's throne, not to mention that of an army officer – you're an officer wherever you are and should set a good example, the Telegraph quotes a colonel as saying. But not even he can keep a straight face for long. Young officers are just that, they don't stay at home knitting, he goes on to admit.

It's so easy to get pompous about this, isn't it? Chippy to the end, the Sun protests that it's not part of the fake outrage and it's the posher papers (I think it means the Mail, which has five pages on the subject) that are getting worked up. The dear old Guardian provides a prim 500 words, tucked away on an inside page. The Times has a double-page spread, and the FT once again shields its readers from the harsh realities of unequal modern Britain.

No, I haven't forgotten the privacy issue that is first cousin to the censorship issue. Prince Charles "bans" nude pics, the Mail tells its readers. Actually no, he just got a legal flunky to remind the press and broadcasters of assorted media codes on individual privacy and human rights. The royal Fitztightly chappie may even have murmured the word "Leveson" down the phone for Fleet Street's more knuckle-dragging executives. (I wonder if Sir Brian has ever taken Lady Leveson to check out the eye candy in Las Vegas?)

So the mobile shots are not to be seen in the mainstream UK media. Is this an outrage, a violation of our Magna Carta rights? Of course not, but some of the people saying so will also say the prince's behaviour was immature and deplorable. Having it both ways? Welcome to Britain, where newspapers that deplore the rampant exploitation of sex in our society – I name no names, Paul Dacre – serve up a generous dollop of prurient filth most days of the week and sell a lot of copies in the process. As for their websites, don't ask. They don't.

As the papers are keen to remind us, Harry has been in plenty of scrapes before: drinks, drugs, swastikas, pretty girls – though he also won a place to train in the US as an Apache helicopter pilot, which apparently is very exacting work. They don't let boys play with such expensive toys if they think they'll crash them. He also exudes an easy charm, the kind of talent money can't buy, as he showed in his enjoyably silly race with Usain Bolt during a successful – and notably informal – royal tour of Jamaica.

So I prefer to frame the question differently: when you heard of Prince Harry's latest antics – all those bikini-clad girls, the swimming race with another Olympic gold medallist, Ryan Lochte (Lochte's chums apparently held his feet to help Harry), the etiquette of strip billiards – did you frown or laugh?

I laughed. Perhaps the ever-dutiful Queen, who gave us a rare glimpse of the royal sense of humour by participating in that stylish Olympic gag with 007, laughed too. We all need cheering up. That's why Boris Johnson, the clown who got elected, got re-elected. The Las Vegas incident was very Boris.

Of course it's all silly and possibly undignified. But Harry strikes me as likable. A bit wild, though not in the league of royal princes of the past. Their antics were both much more private and unpleasant. Think Edwards VII and VIII, think all the sons of poor, decent George III, their misconduct – the women, gambling, spending – lampooned mercilessly by James Gilray and his cartooning cohort, their carriages booed in the street.

And yet and yet, the two Edwards were popular, the latter absurdly so before he ratted and married Wallis Simpson. Who would you prefer to sit next to on a bus, Prince Charles or Prince Harry? Is Shakespeare's Harry a more attractive character than Henry IV, his care-worn dad? Will such incidents as Nude Harry improve the monarchy's chances of survival? Or will our hereditary presidency succumb to a sternly republican one when Granny leaves the stage?

It's impossible to predict. But meanwhile the Las Vegas saga is surely too funny to resist. There's Harry reportedly sidling up to a member of the royal protection squad (sic) and muttering something about protecting him from Facebook and Twitter – too late, Harry! – and the whole question of what exactly royal protection officers are protecting their charges from at a nude party in a Las Vegas hotel suite (and how). The royal soap opera needs Harry's storyline. It's part of the constitutional mix.