So just what was he thinking? What made him do it?

Sifting through the news cuttings you can find plenty of examples of the Royal Family’s other-worldly attitudes to the concepts of race and the deeply held belief that they really do exist on another plain.

You don’t have to go very far back into the archives to find a startling insight into Prince Harry’s thinking. Only last week when asked about a putative Zimbabwean girlfriend, Harry replied, “She’s not black or anything, you know.”

At Prince William’s 21st fancy dress birthday party at Windsor castle which was famously gatecrashed by Aaron Barschak, some of the guests arrived blacked up. William, it seems, was quite willing to tolerate their presence.

But where do these attitudes come from? Francis Wheen in his book Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies gives us some broad clues. As an antidote to the hagiographical bobbins that spewed out on the death of the Queen Mother, Wheen relates some of the views she expressed to friend and diarist, Woodrow Wyatt.

During tbe Apartheid era in South Africa, she said she thought “it is awful how the BBC and media misrepresent everything that [P.W.] Botha is trying to do”. On the Germans she said, “never trust them, never trust them. They can’t be trusted.” They do, however, make a super fancy dress outfit it seems. She was pro Chamberlain and anti Churchill during the war. There’s oodles of the stuff.

And don’t get me started on Prince Philip’s myriad slitty-eyed, spear-chucking gaffes.

Would Prince Harry be publicly hanging his head and mumbling apologies if the - soon to be - notorious photograph hadn’t been taken? He obviously thought it acceptable behaviour at the time just as his brother’s friends thought nothing of painting themselves up as nig nogs.

But is it any wonder Harry is wrong-headed? His father, after all, has a flunky whose job is to put toothpaste on his master’s toothbrush.

UPDATE: BBC News: ‘The picture was taken at the weekend at a friend’s birthday party in Wiltshire, which had the fancy dress theme “colonial and native”.’

Which just about says it all.

Posted on January 13th, 2005 at 7:59 am

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