Brits shrug off nude photos of UK’s Prince Harry

LONDON (AP) - Britain’s Prince Harry has been caught on camera doing something embarrassing _ again.

Celebrity gossip website TMZ on Tuesday posted photos of the 27-year-old royal cavorting nude with an unidentified woman in a VIP suite in Las Vegas. It’s hardly the first time the prince _ who allegedly disrobed as part of a game of strip pool _ has been filmed misbehaving. The third-in-line to the throne was famously photographed wearing a Nazi uniform for a costume party, and in another photo-gaffe he was seen cupping the breast of a female TV presenter. Some would argue footage in which he was heard to utter a racial slur while teasing a fellow army cadet from Pakistan was more serious.

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. The Associated Press asked an assortment of royal watchers and British subjects about what they thought about the prince’s naked romp.

DID HARRY DO ANYTHING WRONG?

Jim Conlon, a 60-year-old construction worker: “The answer to that is categorically NO.” Conlon, who was unloading bags of material from a car, seemed genuinely offended by the very question. “I’d be proud of him if he were my son,” he said.

Conlon’s opinion was typical of a country where thousands of streets and pubs are named for the royal family. Polls published earlier this year showed support for the monarchy at an all-time high, perhaps buoyed by the celebrations surrounding Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations marking her 60 years on the throne.

Interviews with Londoners up and down the capital’s Prince of Wales Road yielded few critics of Harry’s antics.

Craig Martin, 38, another construction worker: “He’s the prince. He can have any bird he wants!”

Down the road, caregiver Shirley Ashard laughed at the news of Harry’s naked adventure, dismissing questions about the propriety of running around a plush hotel room in the buff with a boys-will-be-boys shrug.

“I’ve got kids. They do things like that,” the 59-year-old said. “He’s a lad, for God’s sake.”

WILL HARRY’S ROMP HARM THE IMAGE OF THE PRINCE, OR THE ROYAL FAMILY?

Ingrid Seward, editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine: Not likely. Seward said Harry’s party-boy image was part of his approachable, normal persona.

“Of course it’s stupid, but it doesn’t make people dislike him _ quite the opposite,” she said.

“It shows that he is a guy who gets into trouble and he’s the one people love to love. It could only happen to Harry _ but we love him for it.”

She did think, though, that Harry might get a talking-to from Prince Charles. “I would think his father would speak to him,” she said.

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