So Prince Harry knocked back pints of Stella Artois lager and vodka chasers when he was 16. It's unforgivable. Why wasn't he drinking British bitter? Especially as his local, the Rattlebone Inn, would have been serving traditional real ale brewed by Smiles.

Some will suggest my outrage is channelled in the wrong direction. Instead of criticising the princely choice of stimulant, I should be swooning with horror that a teenage boy got drunk and smoked a joint.

In fact, I share the nation's overwhelming indifference at this non-story, with part of me quietly pleased that this blighted teenager has enjoyed the briefest insight into a "normal" adolescence.

Even though Prince Harry's horrid hangovers should not be front page news, they do serve a purpose. They provide another compelling argument for the abolition of the monarchy.

Harry is the latest Windsor to cock up. I have no problem with that. Such mistakes remind us that the royals are not special, but accident-prone, toilet-using members of the human race like the rest of us. This a good reason in itself for scrapping our archaic system of preference.

But Harry's drunken exploits, and their public consumption, expose what few will openly acknowledge: that the monarchy is institutionalised cruelty.

Despite growing up in palaces, amid all the wealth and privilege you could imagine, Prince Harry has been dealt a dud hand by fate.

He has been born into a dynastic prison, and the sentence is life. Harry has virtually no say in his future. He cannot even vote.

No doubt he will be despatched to the four corners of the globe in his lifetime. But if he wants to go off back-packing around the world after leaving school, he can't. Or at least not unless he takes half of Special Branch with him.

He will always be haunted by the thought that his friends are attracted to Harry the third in line to the throne, rather than Harry the human being.

He may enjoy his time at university (Uncle Edward's film cameras permitting). He may even thrill to military square-bashing (unlike Uncle Edward). But he will have to go through both, whatever his wishes.

Then his destiny is drudgery and duty. Touring places he doesn't want to visit, meeting people he has no interest in, shaking their hands and asking them what they do. What a dreadful prospect for a 17-year-old.

He would have found it easier to endure this miserable existence with counsel from his mother, with whom he shared a love strong enough to melt the iceberg of Royal Family protocol. Her violent death was an agonising blow from which no child can ever fully recover.

And after surviving all that, he doesn't even get to be king, barring more tragedy. He has no role, and yet must conduct his non-life in front of the world's cameras, the star of the real Truman Show.

If I were in his position, I would be abusing every intoxicant within 100 miles. No wonder it's called Highgrove.

One look at his great aunt will show Harry what can await the royal also-ran. Princess Margaret has spent her life being "not quite Queen", and the boredom has taken its toll.

Harry must now be realising that members of the Royal Family are nothing more than exhibits in a zoo. We "loyal subjects" are all gathered around the Windsor monkey house, ready to giggle when one of the inhabitants scratches its bum in public.

What an undignified and inhumane way to treat people. We should close down this grotesque spectacle, and grant these performing primates their freedom and their privacy.

Updated: 11:10 Wednesday, January 16, 2002