It's Prince Harry's birth-month; he's 21, you know. One time, when he was younger, he drank quite a lot, and his father made some noises about putting him in rehab. Now we're talking about it, I can't remember whether or not he did go to rehab, but I remember thinking it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever heard, putting someone in rehab over a couple of Smirnoff Ices; you might just as well put someone in Broadmoor for killing a squirrel.He once went to a fancy-dress party disguised as a Nazi. He thought this was funny; a lot of people called it controversial. I found it impossible to determine why it would be either funny or controversial. (Really, unless it's the pelt of a creature you care about, who could care less what aristos wear to parties?) I know that he regrets wearing the outfit sincerely, according to some interview he gave to a TV company, which wasn't the BBC, whom he snubbed with his seminal coming-of-age message. He likes motorbikes, and has been photographed by Mario Testino with some grime on his face, looking like a young Marlon Brando, except in the respect of having any charisma, or beauty, or sex appeal. He used the word "arse", apropos of his time at Sandhurst. And, er, that's it.Contrary to popular wisdom, there is a much more serious image crisis in the younger generation of this family than there is in the older. However much the Queen or Prince Charles might be accused of being "out of date", starchy, slightly ridiculous, overfond of pets, they can get away with it, since they belong to a reticent generation. The young ones, however, are required to be accessible yet special. Having no special talents, their speciality must be something basically impossible - a classless version of aristocratic superiority; a faith-free version of divine right.They have been hailed as the great white hope, this generation, free from the tang of the seamy love hexagons that beset their parents, bringing with them a new informality and a new approachability, but it's those very qualities that make them even less viable than their forebears. Make your minds up, chums - do you want to be just like one of us, mucking in with your Sandhurst minions and swearing with the best of them, or do you want to be a breed apart? And if you're not the second, on what possible grounds would we laud you as the first?Politely aware of this tricksy business, our media construct certain fictions around these people to keep them afloat. The first is that they are beautiful. Everyone from Zara Phillips through Princess Beatrice to Prince William has been credited with some physical loveliness, on the basis that beauty is a perfectly comprehensible, modern thing to be celebrated for. Of course, it's wholly bogus; none of them is ever going to put the squeeze on Kate Moss. The second fiction is that their lifestyles are rarefied and unusual for reasons beyond the fact that they spend a lot of money on them. Again, patently bogus. The third is that they occupy an indispensable place in the nation's culture; in fact it is this lie of indispensability that has screwed them, since if they had been allowed to fade quietly into the background, slowly replacing "engagements" with actual "jobs", and "apartments" with actual "flats", they would be well on the way to moneyed normality by now.No such luck for young Harry, who has also exclusively revealed that he "likes to have a laugh". Our expectations of this family are not real, but that won't stop us making a fuss when they let us down; they couldn't fulfil them even if they were real. Nobody, come to that, is sure what these expectations are, but we'll know, next time a prince goes to a party dressed as a member of the Ba'ath party, what they aren't. It's a thorny, inconsistent business that seems to preclude almost all kinds of laugh. Would it not be easier just to pay tax?