He may be the heir to the British throne but that doesn’t stop Prince Charles receiving the same teasing birthday cards about his advancing age that the rest of his subjects do. Celebrating his 53rd birthday on Wednesday, the Prince joked about the number of cheeky greeting cards he had been sent.
“I received rather too many cards than I would have liked referring to baldness, failing sight and middle-aged spread,” he confessed ruefully at a charity lunch at London’s Park Lane Hilton in aid of the Prince of Wales Hospice in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
“I’m not going to tell you who they are from,” he added. “But I’m happy to be what appears to be the butt of many people’s birthday jokes.” Guests at the fund-raising luncheon sang Happy Birthday as the Prince listened and then blew out a candle on a birthday cake.
When last week’s incident in which a 16-year-old Latvian Bolshevik smacked him in the face with a bunch of red carnations was mentioned, the Prince seemed a little jaded with the subject, saying: “If I hear one more joke about being hit in the face by a Bolshevik, fascist lady, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m very glad it’s given pleasure to everybody. It’s what I’m here for.”
The Prince of Wales later attended a performance of Noises Off in the British capital’s West End theatre district with his long-term partner Camilla Parker Bowles. The two have been seen out and about together increasingly since Charles first kissed her in public at a charity reception last June.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
