Prince Harry’s ‘shame’ over infamous Las Vegas party where he was snapped playing naked billiards

Prince Harry has spoken for the first time about his infamous trip to Las Vegas in August 2012 when he was photographed playing naked billiards.

The day started with a breakfast of Bloody Marys before an all-day drinking session in the pool. Harry, who was 27 and dating actress Cressida Bonas at the time, said he was so drunk he initially wanted to get a tattoo of Botswana on his foot but his friends ‘promised to hold me down, knock me out, whatever it took’ to prevent it.

Harry and his entourage carried on drinking in a hotel nightclub before inviting ‘four or five women who worked at the hotel to join us, along with two women they’d met at the blackjack tables’. The Prince said the blackjack girls ‘looked dodgy’ but he agreed to play strip billiards, which ended with him naked.

Prince Harry was 27 and dating actress Cressida Bonas at the time of the trip to Las Vegas where he photographed playing naked billiards

When the pictures emerged on a US website the next day, Harry writes his sense of shame was so great it made it hard ‘to draw a clean breath’.

Despite his fears, Harry says that Prince Charles was ‘gentle’ about the incident.

Harry says he decided to ‘seize the day’ in Vegas because of a traumatic incident that year when he saw a polo player tumble then choke on his tongue, which reminded him of a similar incident involving his father when he was a child. The woman in the naked picture with Harry has never been identified.