Prince Will.I.Am - livin' the dream

His mother frugged regularly to Queen, Duran Duran and George Michael, while his father talked to plants. And, during the 1980s no mid-summer Wembley Stadium concert by any of rock's royalty seemed complete without the Prince and Princess of Wales waving somewhat awkwardly from the Royal Box.

And while his father would inevitably look as if he'd rather be at the opera, Mama would be in her element, Mama not only being the People's Princess (© A. Blair) but also the Pop Princess (as opposed to Kylie, who clearly is the Princess of Pop. Fact.)

So we should not be too shocked to see HRH The Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and second in line to the throne of the United Kingdom, rocking out with Jon Bon Jovi and someone called Taylor Swift this week at the first karaoke party of the Christmas season. Actually, it was a charity concert at Kensington Palace, but same difference.

As you might imagine, it all looked a tad awkward: a future monarch, suited-and-booted in a crisp by-royal appointment tux, leaning in on the diminutive JBJ and giving it the full "Take one's hand, we'll make it I swear...." as they belted out that Cheese-o-Rama classic, Livin' On A Prayer.

What did David Bowie do....?

In one go, Wills nailed his street smarts to the wall: eldest son of the People's Princess joining in on a solidly blue collar song about the working folk of New Jersey making it through a downturn. And ending it with a high five. Well, at least the evening' charity cause was the homeless.

William's performance, we are informed by royal lickspittles, was entirely "off the cuff". But as anyone who has ever joined an office outing to a karaoke bar knows, there's always one shrew-like colleague who, given the spotlight and an open microphone will burst forth with lungs like an industrial-strength Dyson vacuum cleaner, catching everyone off-guard with their rendition of I Will Survive.

Tuesday evening wasn't the first time William has done this, either. He is known to have given a solo performance of the Bon Jovi hit at the 2011 wedding of his cousin Zara Phillips to rugbyist Mike Tindall.

But fair play to JBJ for putting up with his stage interloper this time, being one of the most pleasantly down to earth rock stars I've ever met (even if he did once say of his album New Jersey: "New Jersey isn't a place, it's an attitude").

And let's not get too snotty about Wills, either. Together with his, let's face it, cooler brother, and his posh but pleasantly normal wife, he is the top-selling line of a new hip(ish), sub-brand of the House of Windsor. When not steadying RAF search helicopters over the Irish Sea (so he could have chosen the Stones' Emotional Rescue then), William is taking the GLW out to the pictures on a Friday night, 'disguised' in a baseball hat.

As a threesome, they were the combined face of last year's London Olympics. And with Harry living the dream, flying attack helicopters and hanging out at Las Vegas pool parties, you couldn't get a better branding of the next generation of British royals.

So, if I was the PR department of either Sony's PlayStation or Microsoft's Xbox, and was in an enterprising frame of mind, I'd be shipping one of their latest PlayBoxes and the hottest karaoke game round to Ken Palace in time for Christmas. Because I'm sure there's nothing young Prince George will enjoy more on Christmas morning than his dad and Uncle H cranking up the sound system with a megamix of festive karaoke staples. "So 'ere it is Merry Christmas, everybody's 'avin' fun...!".

Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George!

Right now there can be few men between the ages of 12 and 92, of any particular proclivity, who isn't quietly lifting a titfer to His Royal Highness, the Prince Henry of Wales.

Britain's leading (occasional) royal hedonist - mostly known as Prince Harry, sometimes Captain Harry Wales, British Army, and quite probably now, the Viscount of Vegas (not a real title but I'm hoping it will catch on) - has managed to extend his strenuous summer watching sport by inventing one of his own, "strip billiards".

This is in addition to his admirable day job flying heavily armoured attack helicopters and snogging posh blonde heiresses in London nightclubs. Talk about living it large.

The revelation that Harry was partying hard in Las Vegas this week and ended up in a threads-free game of pool may be causing discomfort in certain circles of the British establishment, but let's face it, his ancestors - especially his namesakes - were known to do far worse. It's just that they didn't have smartphones and the Internet to contend with.

Until Harry's very own reenactment of The Hangover came to light, he was being lauded by the press for his infectious charm and easy-going nature, as demonstrated during his spring tour of Central America and the Caribbean as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

During the Olympics he - along with his brother and sister-in-law - won credit for being a prominent and fervent patron of the London Olympics. However, even this didn't prevent one or two snide pieces along the lines of "isn't it about time the royal gooseberry found a girlfriend?". I can't vouch for whether Harry's opponent across the billiard table this week would be classed as a girlfriend, but, really, he should be admired for the sterling effort to acquire one.

The British media's obsession with marrying off royal offspring is nothing new: every time his father, as a younger man, was photographed with a bikini-clad nubile in the Australian surf, she was immediately installed as a future bride. Harry's uncle Andrew, on the other hand, provided a more obvious template for his nephew to follow, squiring an assortment of fun-loving types, including a soft-porn actress, until he met and married jolly aristocratic fun's ultimate exponent, Fergie.

Harry has had to endure a more aggressive, more intrusive, and more competitive media. But this cheekiest of semi-orphaned royal scamps, with that mischievous grin and shock of ginger on his bonce, has successfully eclipsed any other member of his family for having a laugh, perhaps because of, perhaps in spite of the magnifying glass that has hovered above him from the day he was born.

Ever since his mother died - 15 years ago, a week tomorrow - Harry has put up with speculation about where that ginger hair really came from, the continuing attention to his dead mother from an unhealthily obsessive media, and his role in the modernisation of a royal family, a modernisation partly prompted by its reaction to Diana's death.

I would hardly consider myself a card-carrying royalist, but on the other hand, I'm frankly amazed that Harry has grown up as normal as he has. Yes, he was caught smoking a joint and being drunk at school, but these could all be regarded as rights of passage many teenage boys go through (though the Nazi uniform was, however, an unforgivable error of judgement). It's just that some don't get caught, and most don't attract some sleeze with a cameraphone and an e-mail address for the picture desk of a website that has played more than its part in the voyeuristic intrusion of celebrities' lives.

Note: the Express's two front page lead
 stories are not necessarily related.

Harry's big Vegas weekend has inevitably led to a hue and cry amongst the British press, but not so much about what he got up to in Sin City, as the fact they haven't been able to run with the photographs of what he got up to, lest they end up en masse being carted off to the Tower.

Although they've got an argument, that the pictures of Harry racking up for his nude break are only a few clicks away online, they are being sanctioned by royal lawyers threatening the big stick of the Press Complaints Commission. And few newspaper editors appear willing to risk their future knighthoods for falling fowl of this apparatus of self-policing, a governance system partly put in place due to the handsome profits newspapers have enjoyed over the last 30 years from the lives of Harry, his brother and his parents.

Still, I don't know what would be worse - newspapers whining about not being able to run the nudie shots of H in action or them using the lurid photographs as an excuse to fill columns with moralistic pontification about what is and isn't appropriate behaviour for the third in line to the throne.

He may be third in line, and I'm sure his immediate family will not be best pleased by the attention he has created so soon after the summer love-in we've all had with British heritage. But has he done anything wrong? Is he not entitled to have fun like everyone else?

After all, even his granny spends here time jumping out of helicopters with James Bond, and no-one seems to wonder what that is all about...