Prince William Scrubs Toilet; Charms World
Dec. 12 -- It was the most astonishing of royal pictures. Crouching by a sparse functional toilet in sweatshirt and sandals, his royal hands in enormous yellow rubber gloves, the future monarch of Britain was on all fours, scrubbing a toilet in a remote Chilean village.
On a 10-week charity volunteer expedition to southern Chile, Britain’s Prince William had insisted on being treated as a “normal.”
And he meant it. His trip has included teaching English in the village of Tortel, about 950 miles south of the capital Santiago, doing kitchen duty and scrubbing the bathroom to name just a few.
Photographs and footage of the young prince’s Chilean adventures were released thanks to an arrangement by Buckingham Palace to ensure William’s privacy was preserved while also satisfying media interest.
Not an institution to let go of banner headline value stories, the British media has predictably gone mad over the photographs.
“Wills Royal Flush,” ran the front page headline in The Mirror. “Wills Cleans Throne” screamed The Sun with the cover shot of the young royal on all fours.
Sky television ran a special program on the trip several times throughout the day. “Can He Fix the Monarchy? Yes, He Can,” declared the News of the World, which devoted its entire front page to a photo of William in a hard hat, helping to build a walkway in Chile.
“What has emerged from the expedition is a prince more at ease with his role than previously thought,” the upscale Sunday Times said.
What the Royal Doctors Ordered
The down-to-earth pictures of the second-in-line to the British throne is just the sort of new image the royal family has been hoping for.
After facing murmurs of discontent over its handling of William’s mother Princess Diana’s death and numerous collapsing royal marriages, the only really royal moment this year has come from the oldest family member, the “Queen Mum” when she turned 100 this August.
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