About 10 years ago, I was invited to meet Prince William over a pint of cider in a pub near Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home. The Prince of Wales' PR man, Paddy Harverson, took the view that if journalists could meet people in the public eye, like William, face to face, they would be more forgiving in their judgment of them.
And he was dead right. Five minutes in someone's company gives one a very good idea of what they are really like -- and shows that even the most self-assured of individuals are made of the same vulnerable flesh and blood as the rest of us. Of course, one can be woefully wrong in that snap judgment, but not as wrong as when seeing that person solely though someone else's eyes.
Prince Harry, who turns 30 today, is a prime example. When he was a child, when his mother died and he walked so bravely behind her cortege, we took him to our hearts. But then the endearing, lost little boy grew up. He became the wild child. He drank excessively, and underage, he dabbled in drugs, he dressed up in a Nazi uniform. He idled his time away in nightclubs where a bottle of champagne cost more than most people earned in a week. He was troubled, he was out of control.
Then he had some dazzlingly good moments - such as during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee tour, when he suddenly became the royal family's "secret weapon", hugging the republican Prime Minister of Jamaica and "beating" the world's fastest runner, Usain Bolt, in a spoof race. He officiated at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games alongside the Duchess of Cambridge, and then, just as it seemed he had reinvented himself, he was photographed stark naked in an expensive Las Vegas hotel room playing strip billiards with a bunch of women he had only just met.
