A Bit of Spare

“Frankly I’m relieved that he only claimed to be a killer and accused his family of being a bunch of racist bastards,” says top Royal watcher Hugh Ropley-Tossington of Prince Harry’s new memoir Spare. “I mean, I thought that the title was perhaps a reference to him being ‘a bit of spare’ and would chronicle his adventures as a male prostitute!” The recently published book has caused shockwaves throughout the close knit community of Britain’s professional ‘Royal watchers’, with some questioning the veracity of much of its content, in particular the Prince’s claims to have killed several men while a serving soldier. “The question here isn’t so much whether or not he actually killed those twenty six men, but whether it happened in Afghanistan, or not,” declares Roger Todgerly, Royal Correspondent of the Daily Norks. “I’ve heard rumours that, in fact, they were killed during a training accident in the UK when he got trigger happy during a live firing exercise.” According to Todgerly’s version of events, the victims were fellow army recruits that, in an effort to avert a scandal, the army claimed had been buggered to death by a deranged Warrant Officer in an unsavoury sexual abuse and bullying incident. “They decided that they’d rather deal with the fall out from a sordid sex scandal that implied the army was a hotbed of repressed homosexuality, sadism and sexual violence than admit that a member of the royal family was incompetent,” claims Todgerly. “The whole story about him killing Taliban members in Afghanistan is just another part of the cover up.”

Prince Harry’s allegations of racism within the Royal Family have also been called into question by Todgingly. “These claims that his step mother Camilla mistook Meghan Markle for a maid when he first met her and asked her to polish her shoes, for instance, are obviously fake,” opines the journalist, referring to a rumour that isn’t even included in the book. “As are the claims that, as a joke, the Queen Mother liked to jump out at African dignitaries visiting Buckingham Palace, clad in Ku Klux Klan robes and brandishing a flaming cross.” Ropley-Tossington, however, asserts that claims of Royal racism are well-founded. “It is well documented that Prince Philip, for instance, used to organise ‘hunting’ trips in various inner city areas during the late fifties and early sixties,” insists the author of the best-selling expose of Royal misbehaviour, Muck House: Inside the Pleasure Palace. “They’d send in a bunches of neo-Nazis and skinheads as ‘beaters’ to flush out their quarry by throwing bricks and firebombs through the windows of businesses owned by ethnic minorities, or chanting racist slogans outside of their houses. Once the minorities ‘broke cover’ and ran, they were fair game for the shooting party.” On one occasion in 1962, during a hunting trip to Birmingham, Prince Philip reportedly ‘bagged’ three Pakistanis and a brace of Chinamen. “Of course, the authorities used to cover it all up by blaming the damage and carnage on race riots,” says Ropley-Tossington. “The cunning use of skinheads and the like as ‘beaters’ reinforced this impression with witnesses. Of course, they also had to dissuade the Prince from mounting the heads of his ‘kills’ on the wall at Buckingham Palace.”

Younger members of the Royal Family, Ropley-Tossington insists, were indoctrinated into the racist mindset by their elders having them participate in the ‘hunting parties’ when they turned sixteen. “The then Prince Charles apparently bagged a rather fine West Indian chap in Brixton in 1968,” he claims. “Of course, by the time his sons came of age, it was getting more difficult to get away with sort of thing. Nonetheless, Prince William is said to have brought down an Indian shopkeeper in Bradford on his sixteenth birthday, using his grandfather’s elephant gun.” Such claims have left Roger Todgingly aghast. “These really are the most appalling fabrications, clearly manufactured by supporters of Prince Harry to besmirch his family,” he says. “Everyone know that his brother, in particular, has sought to build bridges with the ethnic community – I mean, there was even that time when he showed solidarity with black people by donning black face himself and performing that tribal dance at some sort of military camp.” Other commentators have pointed out that the incident Todgingly is seemingly referring to was a bizarre initiation ritual in which Prince William was alleged to have taken part in during his time in the Blues and Royals. He and his entire battalion reportedly blacked up and dressed in loincloths before performing a frenzied dance in a field in Dorset, which culminated in the Prince buggering every member of the unit in order to receive his commission. The incident has always been vehemently denied by Buckingham Palace.

Fearing that Prince Harry’s claims of mowing down Taliban fighters is an attempt to paint himself as a more ‘macho’ figure than his brother, supporters of Prince William have attempted to hit back by leaking stories of his ‘Alpha Male’ exploits. “Look, he might not have ‘seen action’ like his brother, but there’s no doubt that William is one tough hombre,” says Todgingly. “In his younger days he’d regularly visit rough working class pubs, get steaming drunk and engage in pub brawls – he once laid out four Irishmen and a Pole in Kilburn. He subsequently took on all comers in a bare knuckle tournament at a pub in Brixton, knocking out five contenders, breaking the jaw of another and leaving two more with concussions. Obviously, once he got married he had to curb these activities somewhat, but at least he wasn’t afraid to take on his opponents face-to-face, rather than gunning them down from the safety of a helicopter.” Todgingly also contends that it was Prince William’s penchant for bar brawling that led to his brother’s claims that he had physically assaulted him. “It was just a bit of rough and tumble during a night out down the pub,” he explains. “The truth was that Prince Harry couldn’t hold his drink and tripped over the doorstep to the pub when leaving and blew the whole incident out of proportion in his book.”

The exaggerated claims being made on behalf of the rival Princes by their supporters, however, are being seen by the Royal Family as counterproductive, claim Palace sources. “Jesus, do they really think that painting Prince William as a violent drunk is helping his cause, or that coming up with bizarre stories about the Duke of Edinburgh hunting down and shooting black people helps his brother’s claims of racism?” an anonymous source apparently close to the King told The Sleaze. “Really, these people just need to shut the fuck up! It isn’t as if any of these so-called ‘Royal experts’ even have access to the Royal Family – it’s all just rumours, tittle tattle and outright lies!”