IF Buckingham Palace is trying to convince us Prince Harry is just like any other teenager, they have done a pretty appalling job.

Thanks to the latest photo shoot we all now know he uses Lynx deodorant, fancies Halle Berry and listens to the hip XFM radio station on his Sony music centre. He's also a talented artist and likes Marmite on toast.

He appears charming and bright. You could almost believe he was a pretty normal lad really - until you look at what he is wearing. There aren't many teenagers nowadays who lounge around their bedrooms wearing starched, wing-collared shirts with white bow ties and pinstripe waistcoat and trousers.

The ridiculously prissy, pompous uniform of Eton makes Harry look like he has stepped out of a painting from the 1800s. It is a stark reminder, if we needed it, that he is one of the wealthy, privileged old elite, living in an anachronistic world far removed from the rest of us.

The future of the Royal Family lies with its young. Palace reformers know they must ditch the distant, out-dated reserve of the older generation if they are to avoid total obsolescence. William and Harry, after all, are the sons of the caring "People's Princess", who introduced a new openness and modernity.

Like his mother, Harry says he wants to do voluntary work, to help the underprivileged. His aims are laudable. But what understanding can he have of ordinary people's lives and problems?

Perhaps he and William would have been better prepared for the job ahead if they had gone to a bog-standard comprehensive and mixed with their subjects, rather than look down on them from such a great height.

WHILE 80-year-old Joan Smith is miffed she wasn't invited to Tony Blair's party in Trimdon to celebrate his 20 years as MP, I can't help thinking there were a few people there who wish they had never been asked - Blair's teenage children. Imagine their embarrassment as their 50-year-old father took to the stage strumming Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode on his guitar while his ancient friends like Health Secretary Alan Milburn and Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong jigged, clapped and sang along. And as if that wasn't enough, he went on to tell risqu jokes, even mentioning the night his eldest, Euan, was conceived. Next time, the Blair youngsters will be begging to be sent to bed early instead.

BACK home in Ireland last week, my brother and sisters and I revisited an old haunt, a large clump of rocks in the middle of a field about half a mile outside our town. Gangs of children used to walk or cycle there to spend hours climbing, playing and having picnics. But now the rocks are totally overgrown with gorse. No one has set foot on them for years. This, in the same week a report reveals children today can't live without TV. They don't know what they're missing.

SO celebrities have been granted tax relief on cosmetic surgery because it's important for their work. Aren't sales reps, shop assistants, solicitors, accountants and others expected to look presentable for their clients too? And in our ageist, image conscious society, being youthful and attractive looking is a help. Does that mean we can expect tax breaks all round?