Prince Harry parties in Los Vegas

Just when the British royal family was crawling back towards respectability again after the Diana debacle, along comes Harry.

Nude pictures of the playboy prince in Los Vegas, many of them quite graphic, were put online by TMZ.

His grandmother Queen Elizabeth will be furious. She had worked mightily, an historic trip to the Irish Republic, opening the Olympics, meeting Martin McGuinness, to dismiss the criticism that the monarchy was just a bunch of lazy layabouts living off the public purse, who were over sexed, over paid, and over there.

William's marriage to Kate also helped set a new serious royal tone – until now.

Now Harry has smashed much of the good work done and given every tabloid reporter the dream story.

The man is clearly an idiot if he went about naked knowing he was being filmed and cavorting with naked women knowing they’d sell their story in a flash.

Harry strikes me as the dumbest royal of all, clearly a result of Diana’s intimacy with empty-headed James Hewitt, who he resembles so closely.

One wonders what Prince Charles (I’d love to be your tampon) thinks of all this. After all he hardly set the barrier very high when he conducted his affair with his concubine while he was married to Diana.

It all looks like the same old story with the royals and the hard-pressed taxpayers in Britain will be asking that fundamental question again.

What did we do to deserve these leeches living off us forever more?

What indeed?