Prince Harry: The Boozing Artist Formally Known as Prince

We here at TheSharkBook.com, like many of our Canadian compatriots are pretty ambivalent toward the British Royal Family. Sure, most Canadians have a soft spot for Queen Elizabeth, but that has more to do with her being on the currency and how good it feels to find a forgotten 20 in a pair of jeans you just washed. We included only one tale involving royalty in our who's who of drunks, The Shark Book, and that concerned a footman who was adding whiskey to the water bowls of the royal corgis – an offense which, although funny, resulted in his demotion (and terrible canine hangovers during which the corgis wrote some of their best stuff). However, when a story like the following breaks, we get all misty-eyed and almost regret the fact that this colorful family is no longer cracking the colonial whip and sending the degenerate misfits among their nobility to oversee our affairs.

Prince Harry, the third in line to the throne (the one the kings sit on, not where you can be found the morning after a night at Uncle Chili’s House of Hot), has long impressed us. Unlike his elder brother, who has of late made a half-hearted effort to paint himself a drink-loving fun guy, Prince Harry has delivered time and again with drunken partying antics that, had they taken place in the 70s, would have caused someone to go wake up Rod Stewart, tell him all about it, and no doubt have him remark after a stunned silence: “Bloody ‘ell!”

Prince Harry has partied with strippers, been involved in drunken scuffles with paparazzi and… well… dressed up like a Nazi for a bit of a Halloween laugh. (Editor’s Note: In his defense, he’s not alone when it comes to good taste and not having any at dress-up time: In The Shark Book we covered the tale of another British drunkard who caused a full-scare terror panic by outfitting himself in a suicide bombers’ “outfit” [complete with wires and candles made to look like explosives] for a costume party taking place near a British army base.)

This time round though, Prince Harry gets the prize for making headlines by participating in a drinking game that even had the authors, themselves not unacquainted with boozing that could collapse a fair-sized mule, remarking to each other: “His nose? What a wildman!”

The British tabloid The News of the World broke the story of a video its editors obtained of the young prince’s holiday last November in Namibia where he partied with a bunch of his nipple-tweaking army buddies (See strange pics – I just don’t trust that guy being so close to the royal nipple – and full story here). In the video (no mention of how this 'weekend in Namibia' tape made it into the hands of the paper's editors), the prince is shown drinking a capful of vodka, swishing it around his mouth, spitting it back into the cap and then hoovering it all up his nose.

We’re not certain if this is a convention with this newspaper, but note the dramatic ending to the first sentence of The News story: “THESE are the shocking pictures that show Prince Harry inhaling vodka through his nose in a drinking game medical experts warn could KILL.” Fear not though News of the World faithful: Death is pretty unlikely, unless all that talk you hear about incest and the royal family is true, and Harry is a delicate hemophiliac for whom a nosebleed could mean the end.

Prince Harry’s vodka snort took place in November of last year, which was around the same time as the BBC issued a report saying that bartenders were becoming concerned about people snorting vodka and then immediately keeling over, not dead mind you, but stunned drunk from the alcohol hitting their bloodstreams far faster than it otherwise would have. More "traditional" methods of snorting vodka up one's nose (does this work just as well for whiskey or other drinks? A quick sampling of a Bacardi Breezer via this method did not bring the desired results) involve the use of straws and tubes for a cleaner, more efficient snort.

And no doubt Prince Harry will need a strong drink up both nostrils and possibly a splash of something in the eye once he sees the sculpture that an American artist is planning to unveil in London next Thursday. The artist’s work, part of a display on the Iraq War, depicts a dead Harry laid out on a slab with his ears cut off and pennies covering his eyes and to cap it all a vulture standing by ready to feast on the corpse (Full story here).