DRINK AND DRUGS AND ROYAL ROLE: WHY HARRY'S JUST A WILD CHILD

Prince Traumatised By The Death Of His Mother Will Have To Make His
Own Way In The World

Prince Harry, the sensitive, red-headed 17-year-old who is third in line to
the throne, has steadily gained an unwanted reputation for wild and drunken
behaviour. Penny Junor, the author of a biography of Prince Charles who
lives close to the royal estate at Highgrove, said local talk of the
prince's antics has been rife.

She told BBC Radio 5 Live: "It is quite well known that Harry drank a lot
and has been drinking for some time, under age, and causes a fuss. It gets
quite out of order. It was only a matter of time before someone was
prepared to spill the beans."

Ingrid Seward, who edits Majesty magazine, said news of his behaviour was
not entirely suprising and claimed that the Prince of Wales's second son
can be volatile and offhand: "His attention span is limited and he is
inclined to disappear when he gets bored."

Harry, who was deeply traumatised by the sudden loss of his mother,
Princess Diana, when he was 13, is unlikely to succeed to the throne and
will eventually have to make his own way in the world. Although he will
play an essential role within the royal family, he will be seen as "spare
but not the heir."

He does not have to look far to find other members of the royal family
whose lives have been blighted by being low in the gilded cage's pecking
order. His great aunt Princess Margaret, the queen's sister, was not
allowed to marry the man she loved, and his uncles Prince Andrew and Prince
Edward are weighed down by publicity and frustrated ambition.

In less than 18 months, Harry will no longer have the protection of Eton
and will go out into the full glare of the world.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the story took six months to leak
out. The result, plastered over the first seven pages of yesterday's News
of the World, was a tale not unknown among teenage boys from the great
public schools, as well as state schools across the country.

Unsuitable friends

According to officials, the prince, left alone apart from servants and a
royal protection squad officer at Highgrove House in Gloucestershire while
waiting for his GCSE results during last year's summer holiday from Eton,
fell in with unsuitable friends and began frequenting a local pub, the
Rattlebone Inn at Sherston, six miles away.

Locals claimed that the prince had been seen throwing up behind a wall and
had been banned temporarily from the Rattle bone after allegedly calling
François Ortet, the French chef and undermanager, "a fucking frog".

The 16th century pub is used by students at the nearby Cirencester
agricultural college and by local youngsters. The News of the World claimed
its reporters were offered cannabis and heroin by a young local dealer. The
pub's previous manager was said to have left following last summer's
incidents with the prince.

In a tale that St James's Palace must already have rehearsed in preparation
for such a media approach, the prince drank too much and indulged in
cannabis offered by his friends in a shed at the back of the pub where
drinking continued after hours. He was said to have invited them home to
carry on the party in a basement converted into Club H, a den for him and
his elder brother Prince William, which had been kitted out with a sound
system and stocked with alcohol.

The official version continued that Prince Harry admitted what had been
going on when confronted by his father, who in turn had been alerted not by
the police protection officer but by house staff who had sniffed the whiff
of cannabis. Prince Charles was said to have been calm and accepted that
this was a normal part of teenage experimentation: he is patron of several
drug rehabilitation charities.

The result was a day-long visit by Harry to Featherstone Lodge, in Forest
Gate, south London, a rehabilitation centre for young hard drug addicts run
by Phoenix House, a charity, which Prince Charles first visited himself
three years ago.

Prince Harry, accompanied by a former heroin addict who described him as
his "buddy" for the day, had a tour of the house and sat in on talks and
discussion groups. It was said that he had been quite shocked by the
experience but had ended up asking many questions.

The prince's headmaster at Eton was informed and he was effectively gated
last term and during the Christmas holidays, which he spent in the company
of his father and older brother Prince William, who declined the chance to
try cannabis himself while on his pre-university gap year training in Chile
last summer. Prince Harry was, however, not expelled from the school, as he
might have been had he been found experimenting with drugs on the premises.

John Lewis, Eton's headmaster, has always said that use, possession or sale
of the drug would mean forfeiting a place at the school, though Eton does
have its own bar for selected sixth formers.

Such escapades are not unknown within royal circles. Tom Parker-Bowles, son
of Prince Charles's friend Camilla, and Lord Frederick Windsor, son of
Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, have both admitted using cocaine - as
did Queen Victoria, though her usage was purely medicinal.

The nearest Prince Charles got to such raciness was when he was flustered
into ordering a cherry brandy during an illicit visit to a pub after
temporarily escaping from his public school, Gordonstoun, in the Scottish
highlands, at the age of 14.

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