William's right royal time

An exuberant Prince William celebrates as the Lions score during the second test in Wellington. Picture / Herald on Sunday

Gone was the pomp and ceremony. There were none of the traditional trappings of a royal tour.

No loyal subjects lined the route to see a swivelling hand behind a car window. The classic limousine was ditched: Prince William got about in a Toyota people-mover.

New Zealand was either on its best behaviour or just didn't care.

There were no eggs, no bared buttocks, no one telling him bared breasts represented colonial shame.

The most scandalous thing to emerge from Prince William's visit was the increasingly obvious assault of the Windsor genes on his hair, prompting one headline of "Prince joins the royal recession".

William came on a post-university break to watch "hopefully, an ultimately triumphant Lions tour of New Zealand", fitting it in before a safari holiday in Kenya and his likely next step into military training.

As prices go, he was a bargain-basement visitor, costing the taxpayers about $120,000. His father's tour four months earlier cost $250,000.

William did not set the blistering pace of Prince Charles, but ask any female who saw him and they will tell you it was twice the royal for half the price.

He was met by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Governor-General stand-in Dame Sian Elias, looking for all the world like the gleeful schoolgirl whose pigtail has just been pulled by the class stud.

From then, it was all stock fare of a royal with training wheels still attached, as the Daily Telegraph pointed out.

William stood in as the Queen's representative for the first time on a blustery Sunday, laying a poppy on the tomb of an unknown soldier.

At its end, the BBC's Nicholas Wichtel noted, it was the moment William had delayed for as long as he could, but that the Prince "seemed suddenly at ease with it".

The royal media - released from the bond which kept them away while William was at university - trailed about after him, ears flapping.

The sightings of William off-duty in New Zealand were hardly scandalous: William has a hot chocolate with three marshmallows at a Wellington cafe; William goes skiing.

A desperate bid for news saw a plane diverted from Invercargill to Christchurch because of fog reported as an "air scare".

William's was a trip characterised by informality. He flew with the commoners. He strolled about in fleece jackets, jeans and battered sneakers.

Young women, old women, middle-aged women and small children went to see him, from 150 in Wellington, to about 500 in Auckland. Some squealed. There were not many men.

"He's hot," said Katie Gibbons, 20, at Wellington Airport.

"I'm not too old to appreciate a handsome man," said the self-confessed elderly Margaret outside the Waitakere Aquatic Centre.

And this - "His skin was the smoothest thing I've ever felt" - from a worker at Starship hospital.