Susan Morrison: Strip into the future with Chippen-Wales

Perhaps Captain Harry Wales is reflecting back to an earlier age, when wild Pictish warriors would swarm out of the mists like blue-painted midgies to overrun Rome’s northern frontiers. The Romans claimed the Picts fought naked, which scared the bejesus out of the legions.

Sounds like it’s a cheap but effective way to rattle the enemy.

Given the cutbacks the army faces, perhaps someone at the MoD has taken note of this lesson from history. Harry might have been modelling a new equipment-free look.

Or perhaps young Harry is looking to his own future. We can’t afford our armed forces anymore, so they are changing the rules of employment. People who put their life on the line now have to wait longer for their pensions, and may have to supplement their incomes.

Did we really have a glimpse of Harry Wales, male stripper?

Harry’s Vegas antics would have gone down a storm in soap opera circles of royal family

What happens in Vegas clearly doesn’t stay in Vegas at all. Last week it was just an internet story. It took a bit of searching before you could find the holiday snaps of a young man playing naked billiards in a hotel room in Las Vegas, I’m told.

That was before “public interest” forced The Sun newspaper, no doubt selflessly and heroically, to publish its weirdest page 3 ever. Not to mention pages 4, 5, 8 and 12. Frankly, I’m surprised there wasn’t a souvenir

pull-out.

The news channels went ballistic. All the royal-watching gumbumpers that they always wheel out for these occasions, be it a dead princess in a tunnel or a buck-naked prince in a hotel room, relentlessly banged on about how angry “The Firm” would be.

The queen, they assured us, would not be amused by this. Prince Philip, they said, presumably having some sort of hard-wired connection to his cerebral cortex and privy to his every thought, word and deed, will be seriously dischuffed by this display of errrr . . . well, this carry on.

Really? Seriously? A woman of 86, who has weathered a world war, the deaths of her much loved parents and her only sister, a slew of high-profile divorces, the spectacular demise of one former daughter-in-law, not to mention the bizarre goings-on with the other ex-daughter-in-law, which at one point involved holiday photos that we really didn’t need/want to see, probably has a bit more perspective than all the stuffed suits in the 24-hour rolling news channels.

And as for his grandad? Philip? A man who has made a career out of opening his mouth and shoving both feet in? Probably laughing his head off.

Anyway, everyone knows that grandparents are weirdly forgiving of the grandkids.

The minute my mum upgraded to granny-class, the grandchildren could do no wrong. Things that would have led to me being marched right swiftly to the nearest bedroom for a stretch in solitary are treated with an indulgent smile and an assurance that crayon on the wallpaper could be washed off (nope) and that it’s a clear indication of creative genius.

The jury is still out on that one, although I now think that my son’s doting grandmother likening his

garish scrawls to something the young Michaelangelo might have knocked out prior to the Sistine Chapel contract coming his way could explain why a Spanish granny thought she could give a priceless mural a bit of a brush up with some emulsion and a wet rag.

Rich pickings

IN other royal news, they have been trying to find the remains of Richard III.

They’ve mislaid them, they think he’s under a car park in Leicester.

An academic described a parking lot as a poor resting place for the last English king to

die in battle.

Well, pshaw, I say. The mighty John Knox, scourge of royal people and blaster of monstrous regiments, has lain beneath a parking space in central Edinburgh for centuries.

Given the cost of parking in this town, that makes it about the most

expensive tomb in

the country.

The only way is Essex for wildlife

Lions, tigers and bears. Oh my! Essex is awash with wildlife.

A big cat is spotted in the dark near Basildon. They immediately scrambled a police helicopter to hunt down a huge orange coloured predator with a massive shaggy mane. Have these people watched The Only Way Is Essex?

Simultaneously, a black panther is seen bounding about the Cotswolds, although sadly nowhere near Chipping Norton, the stomping ground of Cameron, Brooks and Wade.

Meanwhile, up in the Highlands, a mysterious big beastie reportedly roams the glens.

Personally I welcome this explosion of domestic exotic wildlife. Sir David Attenborough is getting on a bit. Foreign travel must be very wearing. So it would be nice if his next opus – Pride Of Essex, perhaps – could be filmed in a caravan park in Clacton-on-Sea. It would save the Beeb a bob or two as well.