Harry finds out what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas

Prince Harry. AP FILE PHOTO

LONDON—Britain’s Prince Harry, Queen Elizabeth II’s sometimes wayward grandson, has been caught on camera doing something embarrassing—again.

Two photographs, published in the United States by celebrity news website TMZ.com and confirmed as genuine by aghast palace officials in London, showed the bachelor prince naked and cavorting with naked woman or women during a strip billiards game in a Las Vegas hotel room.

The 27-year-old Harry, whose boisterous ways had alternately amused and infuriated his 86-year-old grandmother in the past, was reported to have flown back to London on Wednesday morning in a subdued mood, certain to face a family rebuke for slipping back into unprincely ways.

The son of Princess Diana and third in line to the British throne after Prince Charles and Prince William hosted a charity event in San Diego before traveling to Las Vegas “to let off steam before the next phase of his military career,” according to a royal source. Harry is an Army pilot of an Apache helicopter, with the rank of captain.

Confirmed as genuine

As if borrowed from a scene in a fratboy-hits-Vegas movie, the prince’s US trip at first made the front pages of British newspapers with photographs of Harry, in Panama hat and sunglasses, kibitzing at poolside with a group of bikinied young women.

But then came the TMZ photographs of Harry, naked, with an equally naked woman—or women. The photographs were confirmed as genuine on Wednesday by St. James Palace, where Prince Charles and his two sons make their London home.

The two photos posted on the TMZ website were blurry and awkwardly framed, as if taken surreptitiously with a cell phone camera. One photo showed Harry, wearing only a watch and a necklace, sideface to the camera with his hands covering his genitals, and a naked woman standing close behind him.

The other photo showed a naked Harry, facing away from the camera, bear-hugging a naked woman from behind. Beside them was a pool table.

An accompanying story said the photographs were taken on Friday night in Harry’s “VIP suite” at the Wynn Hotel, where accommodations can run up to $1,500 a night. It said it had no information about who the women were, and it offered no information about how the photos came to be taken, or how TMZ obtained them.

The TMZ story said the prince had left Las Vegas for London after the photos were posted on Tuesday, and did not mingle with other passengers. “He stayed in the upstairs cabin of the 747,” it said.

‘The crown jewels’

The BBC reported late on Wednesday that royal aides had asked the Press Complaints Commission, Britain’s newspaper watchdog, to warn British newspapers not to publish the photographs, arguing it would be a breach of privacy.

Most of the newspapers on Thursday complied with the palace’s request, but The Sun, a Rupert Murdoch tabloid, carried on its front-page a mock-up of one of the infamous photos with a journalist taking Harry’s role next to the headline, “Harry grabs the crown jewels.”

The Mirror had “Harry naked romp” splashed across its front page, while the Daily Mail ran with “Palace fury at Harry naked photos” as its main headline.

The BBC reported that palace officials were suffering from “acute embarrassment.”

The Las Vegas incident was all the more jarring for the British royals in a year that has otherwise gone so well for them. Crowds for the queen’s 60th anniversary on the throne have been large, and jubilant.

The queen’s popularity jumped when she played herself in the paradiving-with-James-Bond spoof that was part of the widely praised Olympics opening ceremony. Her granddaughter Zara Phillips, Harry’s cousin, won a silver medal in equestrian.

‘Wild days’

For his part, Harry mingled with athletes at the Olympics almost every day and represented the queen in the VIP enclosure during the closing ceremony.

He drew fulsome comments from British columnists, who said he appeared to have matured beyond his “wild days,” when he was regularly photographed in British newspapers tumbling, often visibly intoxicated, out of London’s priciest nightclubs.

The prince has tried to distance himself from such a lifestyle that has caused distress to the monarchy.

In 2005, he sparked an outrage when he was photographed wearing a Nazi uniform in a costume party. In another photo gaffe, he was seen cupping the breast of a female presenter. In 2009, he was forced to apologize when video footage showed him calling a fellow Army cadet from Asia “our little Paki friend.”

Mostly thumbs-up

If the reaction of Britons to Harry’s Las Vegas adventure was anything to go by, the nude photos will do little to tarnish his generally positive, party-prince image.

This was the assessment of Ingrid Seward, editor in chief of Majesty magazine, who said Harry’s party-boy image was part of his approachable, normal persona.

Among people surveyed at random by The New York Times in central London, including subway commuters reading about the Las Vegas incident on the front page of the Evening Standard tabloid, the verdict was mostly thumbs-up.

“I think it’s quite funny,” said John Daniels, 46, a hedge fund manager. “I’m sure most people would like to be doing exactly the same thing, especially in Vegas. This is his own private time and people shouldn’t be taking photographs of him.”

“He should be able to enjoy himself,” said Gordon Fleming, 79, a retired civil engineer from Scotland. “If I was still a young man, I’d be doing it, too.”—Reports from AP, New York Times News Service and AFP