‘Embarrassing photos’ is the phrase used by the Daily Telegraph online to link to the TMZ celebrity website photo-story of Prince Harry in a Las Vegas hotel suite ‘getting BARE ASS naked during a game of strip billiards’. The two pix are of such poor quality you can barely (ha!) make out, first, a naked man cupping his balls while a topless woman holds onto him round the waist; and, second, from the rear, the same naked man (the crack between his buttocks modestly X-ed out) holding onto a naked woman by her waist (the two of them seemingly skewered together with a pool cue). But the photos are far from embarrassing. They serve to upload the third-in-line to the British throne into the semi-fictitious life world realised in television shows such as The Only Way Is Essex. Check out the abundance aesthetic! Flesh – pots of it. Ascetic, it ain’t! Not that the ‘strip pool’ episode is merely a stunt designed to update the British royals; although this is likely to be its long-term effect. But almost as it if were a set-up, it so happens that the colour scheme of the hotel suite fits perfectly with the prince’s natural colouring. Brown walls, latte carpet, cream soft furnishings; even the pool table baize is tan, not green. Every element is aligned to Harry’s reddish hue. Cue billiards, bazoomas and the Ginger Prince.

Union jack bowler hats, top hats, sailor hats, cowboy – cowboy? – hats. Umbrellas everywhere. Union jack leggings, jeggings, faces and hair. Among the crowds a thousand Wills and Kates (face masks a fiver each); cardboard cut outs of the Queen. Is it all too silly to be true? Wind-swept, rain-streaked, the choir cuts through. Never mind the words (‘Land of Hope’ – that’s dope), or the cold, old lady they are singing to (nine degrees and falling: you can read the temperature by the way she folds her hands together). Only listen to the sound of a thousand years of choral singing, harnessed and let loose again in the mouths of young men and women.