9 stories from that new book about Prince Charles most likely to turn you republican

There’s a new unofficial biography of Prince Charles written by Tom Bower ahead of the long-running heir to the throne’s 70th birthday later this year.

We’ve read it so you don’t have to, and here are 9 of the maddest tales most likely to turn you republican (if you’re not already …)

1.

Charles likes his luxury. He often changes his clothes up to five times a day and travels with a retinue that includes a butler, a chef, two valets, a private secretary, a typist and several bodyguards. When staying with friends he will often be preceded by a truck carrying suitcases, furniture and food; on one trip to the north east he took an orthopaedic bed, his own bed linen, a small radio, a toilet seat, Kleenex Velvet bog roll, Laphroaig whisky, plus two landscapes of the Scottish countryside. He wasn’t invited back.

2.

Charles’s press officer Robert Fawcett leaked a story to the press that the Prince’s underwear needs to be specially adapted because he is so well endowed

3.

The Prince might preach sustainability but clearly doesn’t live it. When visiting President Obama in Washington, he refuses to use a scheduled BA flight, instead asking his American banker friend Joe Allbritton to lend him a private jet which has to be flown, empty, from Texas to London, then to Washington, then back to London, then back to Texas. He charters a private jet for an “environmental tour” of Chile, Brazil and Ecuador at a cost of £700,000; charters another to Italy and Germany to promote British climate change policies; and uses the Royal Train for a five-day “green tour” to encourage young people to “tread more lightly on our planet”. His Royal Train is often pulled by a steam engine that produces 90 times more carbon dioxide than a family car

4.

Charles employs ten gardeners to work at the grounds of Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. Because he refuses to use pesticides, Charles gets four gardeners to lie flat, nose down on a trailer pulled by a slow-moving Land Rover to pluck weeds. Meanwhile “retired Indian servicemen were deployed to prowl through the undergrowth at night with torches and handpick slugs from the leaves of plants”

5.

Charles once agreed to stay for a long weekend with friends in Wales, who had invited many friends, hired staff and ordered food and flowers. The Prince didn’t turn up on the first day and then subsequently cancelled the rest of the weekend. “He later revealed to the stricken hostess that the reason he cancelled was that he felt unable to abandon the beauty of his sunlit garden at Highgrove”