OH DO STOP WHINGING HARRY MAX HASTINGS

OH DO STOP WHINGING HARRY MAX HASTINGS



Have you heard the one about the rich kid who said he did not want to work in the family business? He would settle for just the money, thank you very much.

Some of the Queen's subjects may have recalled that line as they read Prince Harry's hot-off-the-press interview with an American magazine, in which he says that nobody in 'the firm' wants to be king or queen.

He himself just wants to be ordinary: to carry on doing his own shopping and hope nobody recognises him, least of all one of the innumerable pretty girls panting to party with him.

I exaggerate a little, of course. What he actually said to Newsweek reads like this: 'Is there any one of the Royal Family who wants to be king or queen? I don't think so.'



But since we may assume he knows his brother quite well, it is fair to conclude that the Duke of Cambridge has confided that he dreads the day he will have to wear the crown.

This would be a perfectly normal attitude for anyone other than a lunatic egomaniac — the President of the United States, for instance — to harbour in his breast.

As with so much else in life, however, especially when it involves the royals, it would have been better had it not been acknowledged out loud, to a global audience.

This seems especially so in a week when the Duke of Edinburgh's stay in hospital reminds us that even he and Her Majesty are not immortal. Harry's generation will one day have to take up the baton.

Support for the monarchy is steady, but precarious among the young.

In pubs and clubs this weekend, insofar as kids talk about the Royal Family at all, they are likely to say: 'Great work for some. We pay them all this money to live in palaces and party all night, and the best they can do is moan about how awful it is! We'd do a life swap any day.'

Being royal encourages princes to feel sorry for themselves, because nobody dares tell them to snap out of it.

Many years ago, after listening to Prince Harry's father wailing heroically for an hour or two, I gently suggested that all of us who were born into some comfort, even him, should recognise that we are privileged people.

He banged his fist on the table, rattling a mass of glass and silver, and responded: 'Nobody but me can possibly understand how perfectly bloody it is to be Prince of Wales!'

That was just after he had split from Diana, so he could be forgiven for feeling raw, but unfortunately, his self-pitying tendency has got worse, rather than better, with the passage of time, and seems in danger of infecting his sons.



Those of us who passionately want the monarchy to survive and prosper should try to understand why they feel this way.

First, the manic intensity of 24/7 publicity has got progressively worse over the past half-century. Back in the mid-Fifties, my mother, as a guest on BBC radio's Any Questions?, was jokingly asked: 'Who would you like to be if not yourself?'

She replied, unhesitatingly: 'The Queen.' And in those days, many women felt the same. To be waited and fawned upon everywhere; to have cars and horses at the door; never a dish to wash or floor to vacuum — for centuries, to become royal was the stuff of fairy tales and, indeed, every fairy tale ended with the poor but honest country girl marrying her handsome prince.

Nowadays, the world looks a different place. Many girls might fancy a date with Prince Harry, but how many others with half a brain cell would really fancy the lot of the Duchess of Cambridge if they thought about it?

An eternity lies before her of looking beautiful and serene, while ensuring no conversation gets beyond the boundaries of 'Have you come far?'.

And the price of a wardrobe malfunction on a Caribbean beach is to become the wrong sort of cover girl in a host of continental magazines.



It is something like a miracle that Kate Middleton has done brilliantly well so far, and it will be a bigger one if she retains her sanity through the decades ahead.

Where Prince Harry and other members of the Royal Family get it wrong, as implicitly revealed in the Newsweek interview, is that they cherish a terrific sense of entitlement.

They see their personal friends, almost all the children of aristocratic grandees or very rich men, having the life of Reilly without the media aggravation or rude questions in the House of Commons.



They assume that if they could only escape their royal responsibilities, they could have the same lives, play on the same polo pitches, without the 24-hour media attention.

If they were encouraged by those around them to have a spark of humility, they might instead see that, as men of moderate intelligence with no money other than that which the Royal Family has amassed over centuries at its subjects' expense, they would be lucky to have jobs and homes of their own, never mind holidays in the Caribbean.