Curious column by Andrew O’Hagen in the Torygraph. He opens with a meditation on the England rugby team’s piss-up in Paris, which was apparently attended by Princes William and Harry:

Prince Harry – a lager-lout if ever there was one – could talk the hind legs off a donkey and he doesn’t hesitate when some bladdered oaf hands him the vodka bottle.

We know this because we’ve all now seen the pictures from the post-defeat bacchanal that followed the Rugby World Cup final.

There’s Prince William hugging his mates to tell them he loves them; there’s Jonny Wilkinson, drink in hand, with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, diving headlong into temporary oblivion. Some other bloke has lost his top and Prince Harry, ever the scarlet-faced chieftain of the stag party, is ready for a song.

This is called “drowning your sorrows”. It’s called “letting off steam”. It’s called “cheering up the lads”.

But then,

Let us put aside the fact that the same behaviour in Newcastle quickly gets you bundled into the back of a police van, and concentrate instead on the occasional value of binge drinking.

Funny how the spectacle of upper-class vandalism still makes the new modern Torygraph go all dewy-eyed.