![]() ![]() I had left Gordonstoun by the time he returned to be guardian (head boy), so his school days ended on a high note. The prince disappeared to Geelong Grammar School, in Victoria, Australia, for two terms in 1966, when he was 17. The young director who introduced us to Shakespeare and went on to be a great headmaster of Eton was Sir Eric Anderson. In 1965, he played the Duke of Exeter to my Lieutenant Bardolph in Henry V, though I think the plot was largely lost on us. He had a couple of resounding successes as an actor. In time, the prince did begin to make friends. The collateral was Sgt Green was sacked and the prince lost his only friend and confidante. Somebody shopped him to the Daily Mirror and all hell broke loose in the national press. To this day, I bet he wishes he’d picked a lager shandy. The boys chose the Crown Hotel, where the prince ordered a cherry brandy. When they landed, they had a choice, I’m told, of going to the cinema or to the Crown Hotel. The prince joined Pinta on the west coast of Scotland and sailed out to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides. If you worked hard and didn’t blot your copy book, you got to go on a “cruise” in one of the school boats, a ketch called Pinta. He may have been the only friend the prince had. The prince confided in him in those first years. There was one thing that made him very cool in our eyes: he had a bodyguard, Sgt Green, a large, friendly London copper in a Land Rover who followed him around. I can’t remember who led or if he stood on my feet, but it was ridiculous. My wife likes to misquote the old music hall song about Charles’s great uncle, “You’ll Never Guess I Married the Man who Danced with the Prince of Wales”. Gordonstoun was monastic – they didn’t allow girl pupils for some years after we left – so we had to dance with each other. We took Highland dancing lessons together. He liked The Goon Show, we all did and could do what I call “Eccles speak”. And he was a good mimic with a sense of the ridiculous. He told us he didn’t know where the kitchens were in Buckingham Palace. Sometimes he would let his guard down and chat. He was quite bright and I don’t remember him being picked on there. But he may have found some solace in the classroom. A couple of boys tried to be friendly but themselves got teased and jeered at for being the “king’s friends”. ![]() In the summer, lifeguard duty meant jumping into it.īeing friends with him was nigh on impossible in the early days. There was a fire brigade, I played in the pipe band, the prince was in the Coastguard, which involved sitting for hours staring at the grey sea. You could sail, which was good fun (though that turned into a disaster for the prince, read on) and there were all sorts of community-minded activities. There was a lot to do outside of school time. Gordonstoun is in the far north of Scotland, on the Moray Firth to the east of Inverness. ![]() It was drummed into my generation, backed up with Gordonstoun’s own motto of Plus est en vous – There is more in you. This meant punching him, pulling his ears, all out of sight in the scrum. But the first time I saw the bullying for myself was playing rugby.Ī couple of the boys decided it would be funny to “do” him. It was common knowledge he was attacked in his dormitory tipped out of bed while sleeping, that sort of stuff. We were in the same class, but not the same house. It’s all a long time ago – 61 years – and Prince Charles, as we had to call him, was by no means the only junior bullied by marauding gangs of older boys at a British public school. But the boy I met, 13 years old, painfully shy, was not the Duke of Edinburgh. I think I know why he went: his father prospered at Gordonstoun. We both hated it, only I wasn’t going to be King. It’s very telling that neither I nor the King sent our children to Gordonstoun, preferring Eton instead, despite both attending the former. ![]()
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