When Prince Harry makes a commitment, he sticks to it — even if it means facing the world after a very publicly embarrassing weekend in Las Vegas.
On September 3, two weeks after his boozy party spree in Sin City, the 27-year-old attended the WellChild Awards in London. Wearing a navy blue suit and a red patterned tie, the smiling Brit — who is a Patron of WellChild — greeted officers on his way inside InterContinental Hotel.
Harry first met with each winner and their family members before the ceremony began. Harry also spoke with a little boy, Alex Logan, who had previously told a British TV station he planned to tell the Prince, “I’m glad you kept your clothes on.”
“You keep looking up at your Mum. It looks like you’re dying to say something but you’re worried she’ll tell you off,” Harry told the 6-year-old, who has leukemia. “I heard you were on ITV earlier and you said something cheeky but let’s not talk about that here.” Later on, Harry presented the award for the Most Inspirational Child (age 3-6) and delivered a speech.
“I’m never shy in coming forward. . .” Harry said, causing the quiet room to roar with laughter. “It is difficult to imagine to imagine a finer, more inspirational group of people than is gathered here tonight. I come along to the WellChild Awards knowing that I will meet old friends and make new ones. I am totally unprepared for the extraordinary reality of what greets me. I leave a very humble man.”
“All of you — children, families, nurses, doctors — are too remarkable to describe with mere words,” Harry also said. “You’re fun, brave, inspirational, dedicated, magnificent. . . I think you represent the very best of Britain. Your spirit triumphs through adversity.”
Harry has yet to make an official comment about his wild weekend in the U.S., though party girl Carrie Reichert opened up about it in a recent interview with the U.K. publication The People (as excerpted by The Mirror). In her tell-all, the 32-year-old British beautician who resides in San Diego, California, claimed she and a naked Harry “kissed for 15 to 20 minutes” in his VIP suite.
A Palace insider denies Reichert’s claims, telling Us Weekly: “The story is not true. Harry’s disappointed, but not surprised, that people are making up stories for money.”
While Reichert’s version of events may be exaggerated, fellow Vegas partier Melissa Vagner tells the new issue of Us Weekly (out now) that Harry “had two things in his sights: vodka and women.”
