Buckingham Palace is refusing to comment on newspaper reports that Prince Philip was recently arrested by police who had found him urinating in a dustbin in an alleyway behind Soho’s notorious ‘Throbbing Cock’ strip-club. The prince was allegedly held for over four hours at Charing Cross police station before being released with a caution. Police were called to the scene of the incident after complaints from late-night revellers of an elderly drunk in a dirty raincoat shouting abuse at traffic and exposing himself to female passers-by. According to some reports, the Prince was naked beneath his raincoat, save for a pair of plaid socks held up by suspenders. This is simply the latest in a growing catalogue of bizarre behaviour on the part of various Royals. At Easter, Princess Anne provoked outrage when she described a handmade floral tribute proffered to her by an elderly female fan at Balmoral as “Quite pathetic”. When the pensioner burst into tears, the Princess Royal responded by calling her “a silly old cow”, before proceeding to punch her in the face. In another incident, the Countess of Wessex apparently told an undercover tabloid reporter that her husband, Prince Edward, had regularly attended gay masturbation orgies held by her coke-fiend business partner. Although she later claimed to have been misquoted, the resulting newspaper article caused considerable embarrassment. In the wake of these occurrences, there have even been suggestions that the late Princess Margaret’s last illness was not all that it seemed but that, in reality, her confinement to a wheelchair was simply the result of excessive alcohol consumption. Indeed, some critics have claimed that she originally took to her bed after losing a marathon drinking contest with the Queen Mother – she allegedly vomited first, after only four bottles of gin, a half-bottle of vodka and two olives.

However, as The Sleaze can exclusively reveal, serious doubts are now being cast on the role of the Royals in these incidents, with some commentators suggesting that they are actually the work of mischievous Royal impersonators. Former Royal butler Arliss Nobbs says that he first had his doubts when Prince Charles demanded to be tossed off after masturbating. “That simply isn’t the type of behaviour one expects from a gentleman, let alone the heir to the throne”, he told us. “For one thing, he was in the bath at the time – gentlemen only do it in bed with the sheets pulled back (so as not to stain the silk), and use their handkerchiefs. Moreover, he was looking at a topless picture of Geri Halliwell at the time and she’s simply not his type – her tits are too big and she isn’t horsey enough”. Nobbs’ suspicions were raised further when a tabloid newspaper published a ‘kiss and tell’ story by Soho prostitute Brenda Stropp, in which she claimed the Prince of Wales had paid her for kinky sex sessions. According to Stropp, the heir to the throne, naked save for a riding hat, would take her roughly from behind, alternately thrashing her bottom with a riding crop and blowing a hunting horn as he made vigourous love to her. “It was quite painful”, she said. “He’d usually shout ‘Tally Ho!’ as he climaxed”. Nobbs is convinced that the man riding Stropp’s shapely rump was an impostor. “Apart from the fact that a true gentleman always takes his hat off before sexual congress, his Highness has a far more traditional approach to love-making”, reveals Nobbs. “Secret video footage (taken for security purposes, of course) of his bedroom show him making love to both his late wife and Camilla Parker-Bowles (not at the same time, obviously), and clearly shows that he never varies from the missionary position with the lights off!” The idea that the recent spate of bad behaviour by the Royals is actually the work of impostors was given further credence when investigations by The Sleaze revealed that the man recently apprehended in Soho was named in Police arrest reports as Harry Monk of Bolsover, rather than His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

But if a gang of Royal doppelgangers are on the loose causing havoc, who is employing them, what is their motivation, exactly who are they? Nobbs believes that they are part of a conspiracy by anti-Royalists, probably led by pinko-republican newspaper The Guardian, to discredit the Royal Family. However, top Royal reporter Hugh Ropley-Tossington has another theory, believing that the impostors were in fact originally hired by the Royal Family to double for them. “Having doubles fulfilling their official duties would allow the Royal Family to get away from the pressures of public life and pursue their leisure interests incognito”, he claims, pointing out that he recently saw an old couple looking remarkably like the queen and Prince Philip trying to get a pensioners discount on a garden shed at his local Homebase store. “However, whilst physically resembling the Windsors, it seems these doubles are having problems behaving in character”. Further investigations by The Sleaze have revealed that for several years Harry Monk – the man impersonating Prince Philip – has been on the books of a theatrical agent, Gordon Chook, specialising in supplying celebrity lookalikes. “I can neither confirm nor deny that I have been approached by Buckingham Palace to supply doubles for the Royal family”, Chook told us. Nevertheless, he was willing to reveal that many prominent, and unexpected, individuals have used his services. “The man know to the world as Saddam Hussein is in fact a former porn movie actor from Acton”, he confided over several pints of beer in an East End pub. “The real Saddam was originally afraid of assassination attempts by the CIA. His double proved to be so good at the job that the real Saddam decided to retire from politics altogether; he does a milk-round in Surbiton now”. Chook agrees that it can be a problem when the double, despite a physical resemblance, cannot get into character. “We had a Bill Clinton who couldn’t get it up once, and a coherent, teetotal George W. Bush – bloody useless!” Chook has one final thought on the subject: “Who is to say that it is the doubles who are misbehaving? Perhaps its the real Royals at it – using their doubles as a convenient excuse!”