An unauthorized new biography of Prince Charles says his lavish spending reveals a monarch utterly divorced from the life of ordinary people, a media report said on Friday.
According to Tom Bower's "Rebel Prince", published on Thursday by William Collins, Charles once "shrieked" and "trembled" at the sight of an unknown plastic substance covering his dinner, only to be told "It's cling film, darling", by his wife Camilla, the Guardian reported.
On another occasion, Bower, who has previously written unauthorised biographies of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson and Egyptian business magnate Mohamed Fayed, claimed that the Prince brought his own mattress, toilet seat, Kleenex Velvet toilet paper and two "landscapes of the Scottish Highlands" when visiting a friend in north-east England.
The biography also alleged that Charles took a trip on the royal train from Highgrove to Penrith to visit a pub, a journey that cost 18,916 pounds.
In another incident, the Prince reportedly complained in his journal after flying Club Class to Hong Kong on a chartered British Airway plane: "It took me some time to realise that this was not first class... Although it puzzled me as to why the seat seemed so uncomfortable. Such is the end of Empire, I sighed to myself."
Bower has said that he interviewed more than 120 people for his biography of Charles, who he claims has "resorted to machination and media manipulation to restore his position" since 1997.
The Prince, according to Bower, "presides at the centre of a court with no place for democracy or dissenting views... Like some feudal lord", the Guardian reported.
Charles' army of employees -- Bowers claims that he has more than 120 staff -- include three footmen to escort visitors to his office, "each responsible for a short segment of corridor"; four valets to help him change his clothes up to five times a day; four gardeners who "lie flat, nose down on a trailer" to hand pluck weeds, because of the prince's hatred of pesticides; and "retired Indian servicemen deployed to prowl through the undergrowth at night with torches and handpick slugs from the plants of leaves".
According to the writer, the Prince has arrived at functions with his own pre-mixed martinis carried by a police officer, with an aide delivering a bag containing the food he would eat.
Charles is obsessed with public opinion, Bower claimed, even once hurling a dinner plate to the floor at a dinner party after learning of his low popularity ratings.
--IANS
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