The future king cops a little feel

I've never been much for the British Royals. I blame Princess Diana for this. She may have been England's rose or what not, but she didn't do a thing for me. Where others saw glamour and elegance, I saw a well-dressed beak-nosed woman who came off as a lot older than her age and often wore a matching hat. I guess she did look humble and compassionate when she was exchanging dieting tips with AIDS patients, but that's no reason to put a Princess Diana commemorative plate on the mantlepiece -- especially when there are still so many good Elvis commemorative plates floating around.

Because of Princess Di, my impulse is to tune out anything royal related. Although the antics of the two new ones -- William and Harry -- have been getting harder and harder to ignore.

Every Monday morning I am flooded with stories of William and Harry's wild weekends. These accounts always seem to consist of a lot of drinking on the British taxpayer's quid, and then some dancing, either described as "stiff" or "spastic," and finally, as the bulbs flash, one of the princes lays a good grope on an unsuspecting female.

On the surface everybody wins: The tabloids get a picture; the female gets to feel the big manly hands of royalty; the British taxpayer gets to have a taste of the drunken debauchery which once made Britain great and the princes are able to get their grope on.

This latest wild weekend ended with Harry face down in the gutter and William with his hand on the breast of a Brazilian coed. Word is the poppa prince is going to give his boys, now in their mid-twenties, a stern lecture on their out-of-control public behavior, and their responsibility to the crown.

I hope he also tells them that, although a boozed up fleeting grope is OK if you happen to be a midshipman on leave or a middle aged Italian man in a Milan discotech, when you literally have the keys to the kingdom you have to stiffen the upper lip and finish what you started.